A Truck Dream Telecast

Greetings from Pittsburgh!
At 11:39 this morning, I received a text message from my son who is a bug operator in the Twin Cities. His text read, "Had a truck dream last night".
On June 27th, I wrote about the "dreaded truck dream" in this blog. I remember how proud I was of my son when he had his first truck dream last winter. As far as I am concerned, one is not truly meshed into the live TV sports community until one experiences a truck dream.
During a truck dream, nothing goes right and there is nothing you can do about it.
Little did I know that my son's text message was a precursor to today's game/telecast!
This was a weird game to begin with.
It was a rain out make up against the Florida Marlins at 3:00 eastern.
Crew call was 9:00 and the "live" truck dream began at 10:15 when our duet operator hadn't shown up. A call was made and it was determined that the operator thought it was a night game. Fifteen minutes later it was discovered that our ENG camera operator also thought this was a night game. Unlike the duet operator who was on her way, the ENG guy couldn't possibly be to the stadium until 2:30. We captured some sound for the pregame show through the truck and the ENG guy showed up and shot soundbites for the postgame show.
This was only the beginning of the "live" truck dream.
With the first pitch scheduled for 3:10, we had three opening segments to fill.
The first segment recapped the series in which the rainout occured. The video recap with two lower third graphics was finally completed after four attempts.
The second segment on the starting pitchers was much more successful as the video package for the segment only needed three takes.
Our final segment was titled 5 in :55 in which we highlight five players who we think will have an impact on the game. After three passes the 5 in :55 package was completed.
Now we began recording the segments with the announcers.
We started with the third segment and after our 7th take this opening segment was done.
The second segment was recorded next in only 4 takes!
We were really on fire when we recorded the opening segment of the show.
Three takes and it was in the can!
Recording the batting orders and defenses was next. This process usually takes a good five minutes and never more than ten minutes.
We captured the Cardinals batting order and defense and also the Marlins batting order.
This took 15 minutes and we still had not recorded the Marlins defense.
At this time I implored the TV Gods to "please, please, please let us capture the Marlins defense in one attempt! Please!
We did it!
That may have been the happiest moment of the entire season for our TV crew.
Well not so fast.
After we aired the Marlins batting order in the bottom of the first inning we realized that the Marlins had changed not just the lead-off batter but the number two batter as well.
Things settled down after this but we were trapped in the dreaded truck dream for almost 5 1/2 hours.
Fourteen telecasts remaining for the 2010 baseball regular season.
Again, I beg of you TV Gods, "please, please, please no more "live" truck dreams." "PLEASE".