Talkin' Bout Playoffs

October is the busiest, and in many ways, best sports month of the year. Baseball goes into the playoffs, college and pro football get interesting, and basketball and hockey teams gear up for the season. There’s no hockey this year, though, or at least not in October or November. Still, I guess it’s a pretty good month, since I found five bucks on the street the other day. Below is what happened this past week.

Baseball:
- The playoff field was set Wednesday and then whittled down Friday. If you missed what happened in the regular season, you should be ashamed of yourself and also read this article, I guess. Friday’s games were sudden-death playoffs—the new Wild Card feature for 2012. Atlanta lost at home to St. Louis after a bizarre infield fly call that Chipper Jones, the Braves star who has played his (probably) final game, predicted would happen. The infield fly rule is sorta hard to explain, but trust me, the ruling was odd. Then fans threw trash on the field! Texas lost to Baltimore, which may be the worst team in the whole shebang, and I wrote about that here. Then CC Sabathia and the Yankees whupped their asses in Game 1 of the real playoffs.

- The Reds, who had basically the healthiest rotation in baseball, locked up their playoff spot earlier than any other team in baseball, then they saw their ace Johnny Cueto leave the game early with some sort of abdominal strain. Again, baseball is pretty much a series of random, unpredicatble events, as is life. It's all fine for Cincinnati though, as Mat Latos saved the Reds' bacon in relief. Fun fact about Mat: His cat is named Cat Latos and has more Twitter followers than me.

- Tim Lincecum, the two-time Cy Young winner who’s a pothead and has long hair and who sucks now, will not start in Game 3 for the Giants. You're cheering if you’re a dad from the 50s who has one of those flattop haircuts and who hates "those hippies who don't know who fights for their freedom to act like goddamn jackasses."

- In non-playoff news, Jim Tracy resigned from managing the Rockies. Tracy was considered by a bunch of people in the game as the worst in-game manager in baseball, but plenty of people liked him too. The odd part is the Rockies basically signed him to a lifetime contract on a handshake agreement before the season. Anyways, they're free of Tracy, who didn't try to pull a George Costanza at Play Now, which is nice of him.

- In presidential baseball news, Teddy Roosevelt finally won his race. Here's some info on that.

The NFL:
- Drew Brees broke Johnny Unitas' record! No one in football cares about records! This is why no one gives a shit when basically a whole team is busted for steroids! Here's a funny video of Oprah embarrassing herself with Drew Brees from a couple years ago!

- Colts coach Chuck Pagano, who was diagnosed with Leukemia earlier in the month, is out for a couple months to undergo treatment. He wrote an inspiring letter to the team and fans Friday, and Sunday they beat the Packers. I feel like hardass football coaches, even though they might not be the funnest guys to hang out with or work for, are probably bullheaded enough to do well in the face of these types of diseases. In those trying situations, being a hardass certainly can't hurt.

College Football:
- The Cocks are awesome. Ha ha ha, cocks.

NBA:
- The Knicks are basically the oldest team in the world. Marcus Camby, the newly-signed center, who was born in 1974, is out a week or more with a calf strain. Rasheed Wallace, who didn’t play professionally last year, is new to the team, and oh my God, don't click this link.

- Great quote here by Doc Rivers about newly-signed backup center Darko Milicic. Rivers says the defensive whiz/offensive failure/onetime high draft pick "lives in the past a lot," which is fun to think about. It sounds sort of literary, doesn't it? Like Darko spends a lot of time sitting in his car with the engine off, thinking, "I was picked ahead of Chris Bosh in the draft! The scouts loved me! They couldn't have been that wrong, right? I had something back then! I had something back then! [beats steering wheel in rage, then composes himself] Did I do something wrong? Did something happen? I feel like something happened to me but I don't know what…" Then he takes a long, long drag on his hand-rolled cigarette, which has nearly burned down to his calloused fingers. The millions of dollars he's earned playing basketball will not fill the void in his soul.

- Are the Wizards going to be good? Maybe, says ESPN. Nah, says the team's owner.

 NHL:
- Nope, still nothing. Bob McKenzie says he doesn't think there'll be a season. You should probably boycott the sport now. If you're still following it, that is.

@samreiss_

Previously- The Less Crappy Referees Are Back