It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Yesterday, ABC aired the animated classic, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It was the 40th straight year the show has appeared on network television, but watching it last night I realized that in today's safety proof, think of the children world, it could never be made today.

In the first scene, you have 5 year old Linus struggling to carry a pumpkin up the stairs. Then you have 6 year old Lucy wander around unsupervised with a butcher's knife in order to carve the pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern. Nevermind the psychological torture she inflicts on poor Charlie Brown... from planting seeds of doubt about whether he was really invited to Violet's Halloween party to fooling him yet again by pulling the football out from under him.

And, no kids' production company would dare show that scene for fear of instilling replicable behavior in the child viewer. And of course, with the necessity of selling programming internationally, there is entirely too much text on the screen. How on earth could they sell this show to Spain today, with Linus' letter to the Great Pumpkin scrolling across the screen? It couldn't be done. No too mention, the idea of letting a couple of five year olds spend the night in the pumpkin patch together? Not gonna happen. But, thankfully, it could and did happen forty years ago and we can still enjoy the saccharine-free goodness today.

Obviously, I couldn't bring myself to blog after the Mets defeat in the NLCS.

Riddle me this... after Endy Chavez makes a play for the ages in the outfield in the top of the inning and you get men on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out in the bottom half of the inning, how do you not score? At that moment I knew they were not going to win the game. And then Beltran (who I still really like) stares at strike 3 with bases loaded, bottom of the 9th in a Game 7? That's the type of dream every kid has, and never does that play end with a called strike 3.

Bah!

As our Brooklyn Dodgers forebears said, "Wait'll next year..."

Next year they won't have their #1 and #2 pitchers watching in street clothes... Next year David Wright and Jose Reyes will be another year older and another year smarter and won't be scared by the specter of the post season... Next year, we won't let it go to a game 7, as we'll win early and be able to rest up. Though, not as much as the Tigers rested, cause it didn't really help them much, now did it?

And so, congrats to the St. Louis Cardinals. They were the best team in the post season, when it counted.

But, bah!

And it's not too late to be excited about 2007, is it?

Onward to the NLCS...

There's just something about this team. They never give up. You never get the feeling that the game is lost. And, if you do for some unfathomable reason think that the Mets have lost; they will find a way to make you eat those words. And I wouldn't have it any other way. From Reyes and Wright to the two Carloses and everyone else, you know they believe they're going to win... and so you do too.

But, what I loved most about Game 3 was that it was won behind the bats of Dodger cast-offs Paul LoDuca and Shawn (my fellow landesman) Green.

The second sweetest words... The Detroit Tigers have eliminated the New York Yankees. The sweetest words... The Mets WIN!!! HOLY CRAP, we're going to the NLCS!!!!!!