ANAHEIM, CA — The officiating crew in the Yankees-Angels series has been making some bad calls. But it’s not because they are bad at their jobs: it’s to save 30 barflies from having to face their families.

“When I have a decision to make,” said Jerry Layne, home plate umpire at tonight’s game, “I use my direct line to the Buffalo Wild Wings (BW3) in Humptulips, Washington to find out if the guys there want me to make the game longer or shorter.”

“They always say, ‘We don’t want to go home yet.’ I think they must have really sad home lives,” said Layne.

Despite multiple bad calls in tonight’s game, the Yankees won authoritatively.

“We try to give them some extra innings when we can–to keep their old ladies off their backs for a little while longer. It just wasn’t meant to be tonight.”

For the Red Hot Household, and for me in particular, October has been just a little piece of hell.

That may be a little harsh: most of the stuff that’s been keeping us so incredibly busy has been pretty fun, tonight’s finance midterm notwithstanding. Funny how I thought the test in my microeconomics class would be OK and the finance test would kill me, then it turned out to be the former that made me cry. Staying home from work for the last day and a half to study for the latter probably helped.

But between celebrating my birthday and the CTS’s birthday (a few weeks late) and going to the pumpkin patch and my soon-to-be-sister-in-law’s bachelorette party, there just hasn’t been time for much baseball. Even when I get home and turn on the game, as I have tonight, I have a little trouble concentrating. Probably has something to do with the fact that I’m so tired, I believe I actually fall asleep a little every time I blink my eyes.

Even so, it’s hard not to notice that the Yankees have a heckuva line-up right about now, I think that whoever wins the Phillies-Dodgers series will thank the Angel’s for wearing them out with all these extra-inning games. And the umps for their contribution as well.