I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics. -- Natalie Merchant

I have enjoyed the playoffs so far this season, even though all four series are sitting 2-0. It's been fun to watch meaningful baseball games. Twins fans were not treated to meaningful baseball for basically the second half of the season in 2007 and by the end, The Nation had had enough. September 2007 was the first month ever where readership at the WGOM was down over the same month a year earlier and that shouldn't come as any surprise -- we went from the sublime (2006) to the ridiculous.

The AL playoffs have gone as I thought that they would -- the Indians are a quality team and they have shown it in two games against the Bombers. Carmona was an absolute stud in game 2 and I think that if the ancient Bruce Froemming hadn't wheeled out a postage stamp sized strike zone, the Yankees would have gone without a whimper in game 1. Wait, they did anyways. Let the gnashing of teeth begin in New York.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox won a pair at home and look like they'll dispatch the Angels in short order. I think that a Red Sox/Indians ALCS would be a fantastic matchup. Oh sure, Timmy McCarver wants to drone on forever about the Yankees/Red Sox, but f*ck FOX. I want this Indians club to show the world what they showed the Twins this year -- that they are a damned good team.

Over in the NL, if things hold the way that they look now, I got it backwards. Apparently, the West division was where it was at this year. In retrospect, I guess I should have seen that. The NL West was 22 games over .500 and 32 games over .500 against the NL East and Central (but a miserable 10 games below .500 in interleague play). Of course, the playoffs are a crapshoot, right?, but the numbers seem to show that NL West was the beast in the Senior Circuit.

With the Mets collapse and the Phillies and Cubs on the brink, the NLCS could, gasp, pit two teams in the Mountain time zone (although Arizona doesn't do daylight savings time). The TBS network and MLB executives are probably cursing their luck. They shouldn't be. It's high time for baseball to get some Methadone to cure their Yankees/Red Sox addiction. You don't see the NFL marketing two teams to the exclusion of all others. No. The games are the thing. There's a ton not to like about the NFL, but they've gotten a couple of things right and one of them is that they've been able to market their product to the national audience without a dominant franchise in New York. Eighty years of this nonsense is enough. Celebrate Arizona/Colorado, if it happens.

I don't say enough about this, but I absolutely love the SBG Videos feature. brianS, frightwig, and E-6 do a fantastic job finding music to show for The Nation. I watch pretty much every video, although I don't necessarily watch every single day. There's a good way to watch these selections in batch mode. I have a link to Music in the "Links to Popular Features" section in the right hand side and that takes you to the music archives. There you can watch several days worth without clicking from page to page. Very cool. Sometimes there's a spirited conversation about the offerings, sometimes not. I would encourage listeners to link, or if you have permissions, embed related clips. If you are wondering whether you have permissions, you don't. No worries, though. If you link to a clip, someone with permissions can embed the clip. I had to laugh last night when I was looking for a "Badge" clip. E-6 had called that song "psychedelic" and I was a little skeptical of that characterization. But, then, I found a clip with Cream playing Badge in front of a backdrop that looked like a huge lava lamp. Funny! Thanks to the three gentlemen who have done a lot of work to keep the SBG Videos humming along.

For the off-season, I want to spend some time doing some Twins research. I'm hoping to finish the Top 40 VORP list. I have about 20 to go (or so). I'd like to provide some more in depth features for the truly great Twins players and if you (I'm looking at you, Dread Pirate) have some ideas about how or where to research these guys, drop me a line. I am assuming that our good buddy ubelmann will continue to provide the best Twins analysis around and I might pitch in there, especially as the Twins construct their 2008 roster. Plus, I'll be following the T-Wolves and hopefully our buddy GreekHouse will pitch in there. The expectations are low. Plus, I have a whole library of baseball books to go through for the library. I mean it, Rhu_Ru, I want to get those out there.

If you have an idea about something you'd like to do in the offseason, you know where you can find me.