The Daily Dose/October 2, 2018
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
In The News
The baseball playoffs begin today and it is possible the four opening rounds will not be completed until Thursday the 10th. This is entirely too long, especially for series that are best-of-five games. Here’s our proposal to liven things up, with the understanding they will be modified somewhat in years where there are divisional tiebreakers like there were this year.
- Play both wild-card games on Monday, the day after the regular season. Teams that whine about this should have won their division.
- Start all four division series on Wednesday and have all of them end by Sunday. No whining. Baseball is played every day. And stop making teams travel twice if the series goes five games, too. Give the team with the best record the choice of hosting the first two games or the final three games. Or, better yet, expand the division series to a best-of-seven series.
- After the first round, one league championship series can begin the following Tuesday and the other the following Wednesday.
- In this format, the World Series would start on Saturday, October 20.
Also, baseball should make it very easy for fans, especially younger fans who are avoiding the game in droves, to watch games on their phones. It would be the 21st-century equivalent of sneaking transistor radios into school and earpieces up the sleeves of our jackets.
If baseball did this, if the wild-card and all four division series were completed in one week, Wild Card Week would become an instant American classic, just like a 32- team college football playoff would.
Today at the Site
Today on The Diary of a Nobody, Sparrow explains the exciting new technology at the retailer that allows you to look up purchases with a customer’s debit/credit card. Also, he and Buzz have a really dull conversation about which closing page is the most important.
Buzz likes to warn people they’re in danger of getting locked in for the night, but as we’ve noted here before Buzz’s closing pages have all the warmth of a POW camp commander addressing the inmates, so what does he know…Personally, I think the ten-minutes-to-closing page is the most important…
It’s steady as she goes on The Bottom Ten/NCAA Week 6, as UTEP, Nebraska and Rice continue to occupy the Bottom Ten medal stand.
2. Nebraska (0-4; lost to Purdue 42-28)
Mitigating Factors: Speaking of school-best losing streaks, Huskers retain B-10 runner-up spot with eighth straight loss…Thinking game was being played under experimental first-team-to-score-at-11:20-mark-of-first-quarter-wins rule, Huskers send in scrubs after scoring touchdown at 11:20 mark of first quarter to lead 7-0.
The Long And Winding Road: At 893-384 all-time, Huskers would have to lose every game from now until Week 5 of 2060 season to fall to historical .500 (not including ties).
Next Loss: at Wisconsin
The Thought for the Day will return.
On This Date
In 1995 – What History refers to as the Beltway sniper attacks begin near Washington, DC. Over the next three weeks snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, would kill ten people and injure three more. The two were arrested on October 24 at a rest area in Maryland and Muhammad was executed in 2009 while Malvo is serving multiple life sentences.
In 1908 – Addie Joss of the Cleveland Indians throws the fourth perfect game in major league (ML) history, defeating the Chicago White Sox 1-0. Joss threw 74 pitches, the fewest in any perfect game where a pitch count is available and with the win the Indians remained a half-game back of the Detroit Tigers, who got two in the ninth to defeat the St Louis Browns 7-6. The Tigers would eventually win the American League pennant.
In 1982 – John Cougar, now known professionally as John Mellencamp, is at #1 for the first of four weeks with Jack and Diane. The song also went to #1 in Canada and remains Mellencamp’s only #1 hit. It was from his album American Fool, which was #1 on Billboard’s album chart for the fourth of nine weeks.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Ben Williams was the first black football player at the University of Mississippi, appearing in his first game in 1972.
Today’s Stumper
How, and in what state, was John Allen Muhammad executed? – Answer next time!
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