When I moved to New York, not only was I missing my boys, my family, and friends, I was missing my Houston Astros too. Astros games aren’t shown up here unless by some stroke of luck they’re playing a northern team. In other words, it just doesn’t happen that often. I still tried to keep up with the Astros game scores, but after a while I let it go to the wayside.

My hubby has ALWAYS been a Yankees fan. Duh!! Once we moved up here and it was baseball season, it was all Yankees. They were on tv almost every night (at the time we lived in town and had cable). On the nights they weren’t playing, they showed an encore presentation of a previous Yankee game. Like I said, it was ALL Yankees. There’s even a channel completely dedicated to the Yankees. It’s the YES channel. Yankees Entertainment Sports. I didn’t mind watching them with my Hubby. It was just like watching a game between two teams that you didn’t care who won, only I cheered for the Yankees for my hubby’s benefit. I wanted them to win for him.

After watching and cheering for them for 3 years, now I want them to win for me. I LOVE the Yankees!! (I know that makes my friends in Texas cringe and probably spout a string of obscenities… sorry) I know all the players by name, by sight, by batting stance. I even know most of their batting averages and home run stats. I became a FREAK. (Hubby and I have started on a quest to go to every Major League Baseball stadium. We have a really great start. One of my favorites though was sitting in the second row behind home plate at Yankee stadium. NICE!)

So now that you know I’m crazy over the Yankees, you’ll understand my dilemma. Since we live so far in the boonies, we don’t get cell signal (we forward our cells to our home number), we don’t get high speed internet, and we don’t get cable. First we had Dish Network satellite tv (and satellite internet) installed because they had an MLB package. (Even with satellite, we still don’t get LOCAL CHANNELS because of the area we’re in. Am I going back in time, or what?) As soon as the installer was finished installing, he told us that the MLB package wasn’t available at that time because of a contract dispute between MLB and Dish Network. That’s a fine time to tell us, Lucille. Of course we had a two year contract with them. Ugh. Dish was hoping and thought that the dispute would be resolved at any time. So we wait, and wait. The Yankee games that did come on during the season on regular channels were BLACKED OUT in our area. We were able to see the 4 or 5 Sunday night Yankee games on ESPN though. Weren’t we lucky??!? Yeah, good times.

Now that the Yankees have moved on to the second round of playoffs, they’re playing on Fox. We don’t get Fox, since it’s a local channel. The other playoff games are on TBS. The Yankee games are the only playoff games on Fox. DirecTV has a channel that has the Yankees games, it’s 721. We don’t get this channel. See where I’m going with this? My hubby calls customer service to subscribe. “No problem. What is your zip code, sir?”. “Oh, I’m sorry, that channel isn’t available in your area due to FCC regulations. Let me see if it’s possible to get a waiver for you on our ‘Networks Package’ since that’s the only channel you want. It’s $2.99 a month per channel”. Great! Sign us up! “I’m sorry, looks like we aren’t able to give a waiver in your area.” Hubs explains our situation, that we just want to be able to watch the Yankees games! “The only other thing I can suggest would be an off-air antenna that would hook up to your receiver for local channels. It’s a one time fee of $106.” Great! Sign us up! How soon can you get here? “We can install the antenna tomorrow morning.” Great! See you then!

Installer shows up, installs the antenna. NO FOX. We aren’t able to get enough signal strength from town. UGH! The installer calls corporate to explain that antenna doesn’t work so that we won’t be charged for it. He also asks if there could be a waiver for the waiver since nothing is working for us. (He also asked for ABC for me so I could watch Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve been having to buy the seasons on ITunes.) After he gets off the phone, I’m all excited since there’s a game on the next night. Then he said it could take up to two weeks for the channel to show up. Ugh again. The next day, which is GAME DAY, I check the channels to see if they’re working. We get ABC. NO FOX. We called DirecTV customer service just to ask about when Fox might be available since ABC had already shown up. “Sir, it could take as long as 45 days.”

IN 45 DAYS, BASEBALL SEASON WILL BE OVER!!

Gonna get my coat on…. it’s a cold walk to my hubby’s truck in the driveway. We’re going to turn on the heater and listen to the game on XM Radio. Would you call us desperate? or crazy?

Wait. Don’t answer that!

10-25-09 UPDATE!

An amaaaazing thing happened last night! Fifteen minutes before GAME 6 of the ALCS (American League Championship Series) came on, I checked to see if our Fox Channel was working. I turned to channel 398 and I HEARD VOICES. I SAW MOVING PICTURES.

YES! I was sooo excited! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to touch anything that might make it go away, just in case it was some fluke thing happening…

So we’re WATCHING THE GAME from the comfort of our very own home, when all of a sudden in the EIGHTH INNING, while our closer is on the mound, our channel goes bye-bye. POOF! just like that!

AAARRRGGHHH!! I got on the phone and called DirecTV to get our channel back! Long story short, all the resets and reboots didn’t work. “Katherine” from DirecTV said she would send the problem to their engineering department and they would take care of it right away.

PPFFFFTT!

Right. Not gonna happen.

Meanwhile, the game is going on and it’s getting close to being over. We are winning 4-1 and I wanted to see who gets the pie in the face from AJ Burnett after we won!

Right. Not gonna happen.I’m sure you can guess what we did next. We put our coats on over our pajamas and headed out to the car. It was 38 degrees outside and almost MIDNIGHT!

It was worth it though. The Yankees won the American League pennant and we’re going to the World Series!! Our only problem now…. the World Series is on FOX. What’s a fan to do??

I’m sure some of you are thinking we’re CRAZY. DESPERATE.

And while some of you may be right, I’d like to call us INSANELY LOYAL.