A night in the life of... ME... at work...

In an effort to provide more insight as to what I am doing for “The Worldwide Leader…” let me fill you in on my evening last night. I was scheduled from 5pm (ET) until 2 am (ET) although I didn’t leave until about 3am.

I was assigned two games: the 7pm (ET) Toronto Maple Leafs @ Buffalo Sabres game and the 10:18pm (ET) Arizona Diamondbacks @ Colorado Rockies NLCS Game 4. I was entrusted to cut highlights for both games for ESPNEWS.

Here’s a look at what took place:

Game 1: The Maple Leafs entered the third period with a 2-0 lead. My 30-35 second highlight was basically planned already. It began with an iso shot of Sabres’ defenseman Brian Campbell since he is the leading scorer among NHL defenseman right now and his team had scored 13 goals in their last two games.

That was followed by a shot of an unbelievable save by Leafs’ goalie Andrew Raycroft on Sabres’ forward Drew Stafford at point blank range (see above). I decided to show a replay for dramatic effect. This was truly “a glove save… and a beauty” to quote our anchors. I’ve seen a lot of great saves and this ranks right up there with the best of them. It was one of those that make you question whether NHL goalies are that good and have that great hand-eye coordination or whether Raycroft merely got in decent position, said a quick prayer and the puck luckily found his glove rather than the huge net behind him.

The rest of the highlight would be the other Leafs’ goals as they cruised to victory. A 30-35 second highlight? No problem.

Then they dropped the puck to start the third period and all hell broke loose. In an eight-minute span, the two teams combined for 6 goals. The score went from 2-0 Leafs… to 2-2…to 3-2 Leafs… to 3-3… to 4-3 Leafs… to 4-4… to OVERTIME. One player on each team scored a pair of goals in a single three-minute span. Literally, each time I started changing my shot sheet (the script for the anchor) and having the editor lay down a new play, another goal was scored. It was surreal.

Of course, we got bumped to 1 minute of highlight time to accommodate the action, chose to run the save, the 4-3 goal by Toronto and the tying goal by Buffalo and waited for the game-winner in OT or the shootout.

Sure enough, the Sabres scored with 5 seconds left in OT and the goal required a replay because it clearly went in the Toronto net only after TORONTO defenseman Bryan McCabe knocked it in (see above).

WOW…. Okay, onto game 2 of the night…

Has there ever been a team hotter than the Colorado Rockies? Ever? With their win last night they have now won 21 of 22 games and joined the Cincinnati Reds as the only NL teams ever to begin a postseason 7-0. We basically knew they were going to win and had 1 minute, 15 seconds of time to play with. This had to include celebration shots at the end.

So, imagine our shock when the Diamondbacks jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the top of the 3rd inning. When the Rockies didn’t score in the bottom half, it marked only the 4th inning of 59 postseason innings that the Rockies had been trailing. So, we had to include that.

But, shortly after--in the bottom of the 4th inning to be exact—the Rockies put up that normal 6-spot that playoff teams light up the scoreboard with on a regular basis. This was capped by a 3-run bomb to center off the bat of NL MVP Matt Holliday. On a side note, seriously, if this guy isn’t the MVP I won’t care about the steroid issue anymore because we’ll need to take urine samples of all the voters to make sure they weren’t high on something when they filled out their ballot.

The Holliday homer was clearly the play of the game and I wanted to go SOT FULL. That means instead of the anchor talking over it, I wanted to put in the play-by-play call from the game. At first, it only made sense to use Chip Caray’s call on the TBS broadcast. However, I must have forgotten how poor Chip is at actually doing his job and after the ball cleared the centerfield fence he went dead silent meaning his call was no good.

We plugged ESPN Radio’s Dan Shulman into the highlight and ran that version once before finding out we could get in trouble with Major League Baseball because we didn’t have the rights to use our radio call over TBS video. Go figure…

All was good until the top of the eighth inning rolled around and D’Backs catcher Chris Snyder hit a 3-run HR down the left field line to cut the lead to 6-4. Replays showed that this ball was so close to being foul you couldn’t throw it up there any better. Centimeters—not inches—to the left and it hits the pole. Inches left and it is truly foul.

The rest of the eighth and the ninth I am sitting on the edge of my seat praying Colorado closer Manny Corpas can navigate through the rest of the Arizona lineup without allowing the tying runs to score or else I basically have to remake my entire highlight except for the Holliday homer. Outside of Denver, I was probably the biggest Rockies fan in the country for all of 28 minutes until the final out was recorded.

Being as opinionated as I am, I must offer my opinion of the Rockies real fast. Sweeping was arguably the worst thing they could have done. Didn’t they see what happened to the Detroit Tigers last year? A hot team needs to continue to play—and win—every day. Taking too much time off can only hurt. Tigers’ pitchers forgot how to throw to the bases last year and lost the World Series because of it. Yes, I am still on that. They lost the 2006 Series, the St. Louis Cardinals DID NOT WIN IT!!!

It probably wouldn’t matter though. Once again the AL is just so far superior to the NL (quadruple-A) that the winner of the Cleveland Indians vs. Boston Red Sox series will beat the Rockies anyways.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that look into my evening at work. Yes, work. That is what makes this job beautiful. Was it stressful? Sure. But, was it fun? Hell Yeah! I would have been watching NLCS game 4 anyhow. I would have loved to watch a great hockey game like that, but probably wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t been working there. The best part is I get paid for this. I feel like I’m ripping Mickey off.

I just don’t think too many people in the world can say that their day at work on Monday, October 15, 2007 was like that….