John Danks brought it. Nick Blackburn did too. So as it has so many times this season, tonight’s one-game playoff vs. the Twins was decided by the long ball for these White Sox. One mammoth, lumberjack blast from Jim Thome. 1-0 Sox. They’re in the playoffs for the first time since 2005. Can you dig it?

Credit Ken Griffey Jr. for throwing a strike to A.J. Pierzynski (and to A.J. for holding onto the ball) at home on the Twins’ tag up from third — the only real threat they had at scoring all game. (Though, Griffey should have gotten some more momentum behind him and it seemed like he took forever to get the ball out of his glove. But an out is an out is an out.)

Credit Ken Williams for bringing in Carlos Quentin and Alexei Ramirez this season, and for not overpaying for the likes of Torii Hunter and Kosuke Fukudome. Credit Ozzie Guillen for being Ozzie Guillen and Brian Anderson for making that diving catch to end the game, one Griffey would certainly not have snatched.

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Hey friends, Ryan here with an important, earth-shattering announcement: this here site is giving away two tickets to a Cubs NLCS game. (Yes, the NLCS. Gasp! If they don’t make it — WHICH ISN’T GOING TO BE A PROBLEM, RIGHT — we’ll still give you tickets behind home plate for a game next season. Watch the video above featuring our newest and most excellent team member, Sarah Spain, for more details.)

If you’d like to send in a video to enter the contest, get at it right here. If you would like to watch videos of other people who have entered, peep our gallery. Most views wins, so get a-watchin’. You can watch as many times as you want, so just do that all day in your cubicle.

Don’t worry, your boss is a Cubs fan too. And if he/she gets mad, you can always take them to the game. Win-win, baby.

Wrigley Field. The Shire. The Friendly Confines. The Hallowed Grounds. The Greatest Stadium Ever Created Ever In The History Of Ever. Ever.

And up until recently, free of ads on the field. Then the Under Armor ads came on the outfield walls and the CBOE ad was painted on the third-base line wall. Very unobtrusive signage. True to Wrigley. Refreshing in this day and age of overt, over-the-top sponsorship and branding.

But baseball’s sly little corporate hands have added more advertisements to Wrigley’s wall for their series with the Dodgers which tees off tomorrow night. Via the Hardball blog at the Trib:

A large ad on the padding of the wall down the right field line reads “January 1, 2009,” with the logo for MLB, which is starting up the channel on that date. A similar ad on the padding of the left field wall is for MLB Postseason, and includes the logos of the networks carrying the games, TBS and Fox.

I’m hardly a traditionalist when it comes to this stuff, especially when it pads your team’s pocketbooks. Which, in turn, helps you spend $91.5 million to resign Carlos Zambrano. But it’s rather obvious the Wrigley faithful isn’t going to like this one so much.

Things we know: newspapers are undergoing a “what are we now, where are we headed and just how can we cut our budgets to stay afloat” period at the moment. And, you know, the economy just released a new dollar bill.

Tough times in this fine country of ours if you want to be a nose-to-the-grindstone reporter. Adding to that, looks like hockey writers are getting yanked at newspapers from coast to coast.

In Florida, The Palm Beach Post decided last week to discontinue staff coverage of the Florida Panthers.

The Post’s veteran beat writer, Brian Biggane, was assigned to the Miami Dolphins. None of the Panthers’ home or away games will be staffed by the Post.

The Los Angeles Times has chosen to use just one beat reporter to cover both the Kings and the Anaheim Ducks, with Helene Elliott continuing to write hockey columns.

The Times will not staff road games for either the Kings or the Ducks on a regular basis. Sports editor Randy Harvey said in an e-mail message that reporters will “travel selectively, probably not early in the season.”

Both the Post and Times endured deep staffing cuts during the summer.

Makes sense. Of the major sports in America, hockey is the least popular. Logically, that’s what any fiscally-minded paper would drop if cuts needed to be made. (Well perhaps high school sports would go first. Though, I suppose high school football is a lot more popular in some sections of the country than hockey.)

But jeepers: it’s a sad day when the Los Angeles Freakin’ Times can’t even have a beat writer for each hockey team in the area. But it is what it is, friends. Trying times, indeed.

One benefit to all this? Hockey bloggers, of course. The NHL has already cuddled up to them — and rightfully so. If papers continue to cut staffs, this trend should only continue.

Hooray for the Interwebz.

(Via Kuklas Korner.)

Sorry I cut off your head lady.

I really can’t get over the fact that Jim Belushi is the Chicago Sports Fan. He’s always in the booth for Monday Night Football; he was the master of ceremonies at the Cubs’ postseason rally this afternoon. (Though I suppose it helps “According to Jim” is on ABC just like MNF. Disney synergy!) There are like 9 billion Cubs fans worldwide and this is the best Cubdom can muster up?

Anyways, a brief breakdown of most of the speakers at the Cubs rally this afternoon. (A rally, that, against my best judgment, I attended.)

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I know little to nothing about Los Angeles, except that it looks like a place I would want to visit for maybe three or four days, tops, and that I could never picture myself living in. I don’t drive, and so on. All the cliches you can imagine about Los Angeles — that’s pretty much how I picture it.

But for as little as I know about L.A., it’s hard not to read this story from today’s L.A. Times and feel a little bit like Chicago is being exoticized as some faraway, cold-pressured land of crazy fans with money to burn and perspective with which to burn it.

Anyway, Cubs fans are paying out the a– for tickets to Wrigley this week. L.A. fans are not:

“The neighborhood has gone wild,” said the Cubs season-ticket holder, who will use another set of tickets to see the home games. “I live in the heart of Wrigleyville, and there’s a strong sense that this is the year, that everyone truly believes that something good is going to happen.” Late Monday afternoon, Cubs fever had pushed the average price for postseason tickets to Wrigley Field games to $338, with the most expensive ticket selling for $2,500 and the least expensive going for $90. In contrast, the average sales price on StubHub for tickets to the Dodgers’ two possible home games was $114, with the high at $1,000 and the lowest-priced ticket going for $20.

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So yeah: big game tonight. People are writing about it on the Internet. Here, for you, is a compilation of those people writing about it on the Internet. A novel concept, for sure.

“The Sox hate playing in the Dome to the point where they feel they the Twins can’t beat them at The Cell. I’m not kidding. Sox officials told me last week that they can’t wait until the Twins move out the Dome because the Twins get away with bloops and chop hits and luck - I guess they’ve forgotten the 90-something horseshoes they had up their rears in 2005.

But they are convinced that the Twins are a different team out of the Dome. I agree. The home-road splits back that up. But it’s not because of bloop hits, it’s because their pitchers - especially the relievers - have been awful at times on the road.” – La Velle E. Neal III, Star-Tribune

“The White Sox have a tough southpaw on the mound and are 53-28 at home while the Twins are 35-46 on the road and have the league’s fourth-worst OPS against lefties. Beyond that, Chicago’s ballpark significantly boosts homers and the wind will reportedly be blowing out at 30 miles per hour. Given that the White Sox hit the league’s most homers with 234 and the Twins hit the league’s fewest homers at 111, conditions also clearly favor Chicago.” – Aaron Gleeman

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