Do you see that handsome devil above? He is Ken Cosgrove in account service at Sterling Cooper. He is also who I will be dressing up as for Halloween this evening. (Anything for an excuse to degrade woman. Kidding mom!)

I anticipate seeing no less than 324 Sarah Palin costumes tonight, don’t cha know?

Some things you may not have seen: Don Draper on the World Series, the worst Halloween costumes possible and Devin Hester’s changing role.

Drink some rye whiskey, have a Happy Halloween, and we’ll see you Monday.

Politics and sports. They go together like … lamb and tunafish. Or perhaps you prefer spaghetti and meatball. Either way, nothing says “recreational fun that doesn’t involve anything other than mindlessly screaming for your favorite team” quite like “mindless screaming about issues that do matter.” Or something like that.

The point being is that as we get tight on the election day, you can believe you’ll see more and more athletes associating themselves with various candidates. One of these is Chicago’s Son, Mike Ditka, who was seen today rolling around with Sarah Palin.

Ditka, who said he was a conservative Republican, urged voters against partisanship and inaction. “This is the land of opportunity. It’s not a land of handouts. If you’re willing to work, you can find a job,” he said.

With his signature tough-love attitude, he tried to charge up voters. “Don’t talk about what you’re gonna do, prove you can do something,” he said. “If we’re smart, the only option we have is to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

Now, that’s taken out of context, but, um, yeah. It doesn’t really make that much sense. However, I would concur –based on the WSJ article telling me so — that Ditka’s (and therefore McCain’s) stra-tegery was to try and remind Pennsylvania voters that Barack Obama accused them of “clinging” to guns and religion.

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So, David Beckham came to America last summer in a quest to be America’s Soccer Savior. And, as we saw last week (a story Sports by Brooks advanced today) It’s looking like it isn’t going to end like MLS brass had hoped.

Look: bringing an old, aging superstar from a superior league to the MLS isn’t going to get people here into soccer. (Pele anyone?) How in the heck is this supposed to energize apathetic American sports consumers when said superstar is only going to be around for a few years? When it’s only one dude, instead of many? What we really need to focus on is this: developing great talent here in the States, and shipping them overseas to compete with the best. If we can get our talent on par with England’s and the rest of Europe’s best leagues — especially England because EPL games are a lot easier to watch on TV now in the States — it’s a better way to raise interest in the national team.

Think of how crazy China is about the NBA now. All it took was Yao Ming coming over to play. If he’s playing in some Chinese league now, the NBA isn’t as popular over there. No way.

Now, this is not to say that we’re not already trying to do this or are doing this (or that it’s an easy thing to do; it certainly is not), but it is to say it’s a much more sound way to go about it then paying a guy the biggest salary in MLS history to hang out with Snoop Dogg for a year.

Or perhaps you would prefer “Like Iverson does rhymes”? Right. Anywho, the moral of the story is that Philadelphia fans can apparently throw empty bottles of Grey Goose Vodka pretty freaking hard. How do I know? Well, I know because of the following video, showing a Rays fan on a traffic light pole who gets domed by a Philly fan’s bottle of Goose. As they say in Pittsburgh, “atch.”

I don’t keep watching this, posting this and forwarding this because I enjoy seeing people get hurt. Or pegged in the head with liquor bottles (although I’m not entirely opposed). And it’s not that I’m all that enthralled with seeing the city of Philadelphia slowly melt into Riotville post World Series. It’s just so GD amazing to see how accurately this guy can sling a bottle of Goose. Simply stunning.

Via everywhere.

I have said it before, I will say it now, I will say it as long as these stories keep cropping up: THERE IS NO CUBS CURSE. There are years of poor management, bad luck (which, can happen outside of so-called curses) and bad baseball teams. (Also, years with great baseball teams who ran into a very hot Dodgers team and decided not to pitch or field well. See: this year.)

But hey, welcome to the St-Louis Post Dispatch’s logic!

Rather, the club’s demise was preordained at a Tennessee tattoo parlor some 600 miles from Wrigley Field. That’s where lifelong fan Jimmy Burroughs got the Cubs logo etched onto his right shoulder blade. But that’s not all he got. Carved ever-so-lightly within the Cubbie “C” he found the words, “Go Cards.”

“I pretty much blame the tattoo for the Cubs losing,” said Burroughs, 26, a child therapist from Bloomington, Ind. “It kills me to have a tattoo that says ‘Go Cards.’”

Ah yes, the entire Cubs collapse can be pinned right down to a man from Bloomington, Ind. — alma mater, what — and his tattooed arm. If only Lou Piniella had known this, he could have saved his squad from their doomed fate by stopping this man from getting a tattoo on that day. But, alas: it’s too late. There’s never enough time.

Via.

Lost Time Is Not Found Again is what the MPS blog crew has been reading today.

+ A Q&A with L. Jon Werthiem. {Inside the Hall.}

+ The Isiah Thomas saga, unraveling further. {FanHouse.}

+ Yao Ming. Rejected by the rim. {Tirico Suave.}

+ Javier Vasquez, trade bait? {Chicago Sun-Times.}

+ Non-sports: A review of last night’s “The Office.” Life is a Highway … {What’s Alan Watching?} Lots and lots and lots of creative pumpkins. {Duarte Pumpkins.}

Quotable:

“Tyler, I’ve admired your great-grandfather for 40 years, known him for 20. Every couple of years I sit down with him, just to breathe the clean, clear good sense that pours out of him. And it occurs to me that I may even know a few things about him that you don’t.

For instance, he turned 98 two weeks ago, but did you know he should’ve been dead at 35? During World War II, he was scheduled for a tour of duty in the South Pacific on the USS Franklin when an emergency appendectomy put him in the infirmary. The Franklin left without him. It was eventually hit by a kamikaze, killing 724 crewmembers. Much the same happened years later, when your great-grandpa didn’t take a flight from Atlanta to Raleigh that he had a seat on. That plane went down. Everybody died.

“Pure, blind luck,” Wooden says, holding on to the arms of his wheelchair. “I don’t believe in fate.”

Well, I do. I believe your great-grandfather was spared so he could be an example of how to live morally and simply and well.” – Rick Reilly of ESPN the Mag writing to John Wooden’s great grandson, who is a freshman walk-on at UCLA this season

Now that fan favorite Ken Griffey, Jr. — and by “fan favorite” I mean “dithering husk of a formerly amazing baseball player that people like having because they always envied him on the Mariners” — is not going to be renewed by the White Sox, where will he end up? Could it be … the Chicago White Sox?

Junior is a free agent now, and the White Sox will probably not re-sign him. Though Griffey is a Type B free agent, the Sox probably won’t risk offering him arbitration. Could Griffey finish his career back with the Mariners?  It’s not known if interest is mutual, as Ms GM Jack Zduriencik would not comment.  Griffey, 39, hit .249/.353/.424 in 575 plate appearances this year.

Well then. The Daily Herald’s Scot Gregor says “in a perfect world” the Mariners would sign Griffey as the DH, which makes sense, but hey, this isn’t a perfect world. For example, in a perfect world, The Daily Herald’s Internet staff would be able to hook up Scot Gregor with a username longer than “scotgreg.” In a perfect world, they would use br or p tags and make proper paragraphs. In a perfect world, Griffey wouldn’t have been painful to watch play baseball in 2008. Alas: This world is far from perfect.