As the baseball sports information director at Florida State, I worked more than 400 college baseball games in my career. Working in minor league baseball, I was the official scorer for at least 500 games. As a fan, I probably have watched another 1500 games in my lifetime. And after all that, I can honestly say that I have never seen a play where a batted ball caromed off a wall, hit an outfielder, and exited the field. The Rays fan in me is mad, but I’m guessing it never happened in a major league game before. Why do I say that? Because I promise you they are going to announce a new rule on it during the off-season…

Alabama lost and everyone is acting like this is the most shocking development in history. Why? Legendary football coach Perry Moss once told me, “Thing about football is that it is damn near impossible to win every game in a season and it’s also damn near impossible to lose every game.” Point is that for as great as Alabama has been in the last decade, they are and remain susceptible to an occasional loss. It happens, get over it…

Best one-liner from baseball post-season comes from Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, who hosts a sports radio talk show on WFAN in New York City. “Congratulations Yankees…your baseball season lasted a full 36 hours longer than the Baltimore Orioles”…

Have two complaints about how Major League Baseball conducts its post-season. First, baseball was never meant to be a one-and-done sport. It’s why almost every amateur tournament is a variation of double elimination, it’s why the World Series and League Championship Series is a Best-of-Seven and it’s why they play 162 regular-season games. There is some precedent for this. In 1951, the Giants and Dodgers tied for the National League Championship with identical 96-58 records. The tie was broken with a three-game playoff and although it was considered part of the regular season, even back then they did not think a sudden death game was the answer. The one-game Wild Card Game – although exciting – is just not particularly fair. Would be much better in my opinion to play a Best-of-Three and if you want, give the team with the best record home-field advantage for all three.

The second thing that bothers me is seeding for the post-season. I get Division Champions are automatically in and I’m okay with that but automatically sending Wild Card survivor to division winner with the best record doesn’t work for me when the Wild Card Winner, Los Angeles, has the second-best record in all of baseball. Shouldn’t the Giants (107 wins) and Dodgers (106 wins) have a chance to meet in the NLCS and not the divisional round?

My black lab Oso had a scheduled day off today and was perplexed on what to do. He couldn’t just lay around and sleep because that’s what he does when he works…

Y’all Have A Great Week.