So earlier today on this bright-sunny-man-this-is-great-it’s-not-cold-just-yet November day, I read this via Sports Business Daily:

StubHub this morning confirmed that tonight’s Game Six has become its highest-grossing event in company history. The game now ranks ahead of Phillies-Yankees Game Two, Super Bowl XLIII, Phillies-Yankees Game One, and the ‘09 Florida-Oklahoma BCS Championship game, respectively.

Makes sense. Tickets to new Yankee Stadium are expensive to begin with; when you get high demand for an already high price, the price is driven upwards, especially considering this could be a clinching game. Yes, I took economics freshman year of college. And I passed.

But see, that’s for normal people. The unprivileged types. Why, if you happened to be involved with the government in Washington, you don’t have to deal with silly demand-influenced prices spikes. From the Wall Street Journal:

Federal lawmakers and people who work for them have gotten their hands on scores of tickets to the sold-out World Series games this year between the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies courtesy of a perk not available to the public.

Major League Baseball and the teams sell a limited number of prime seats to lawmakers and congressional aides at face value, often hundreds of dollars less than the going rate.

[ ... ]

Because the recipients pay for the tickets, the offer complies with ethics rules for Congress and the executive branch. The arrangement, however, highlights what some ethics watchdogs say is a loophole in recently tightened congressional ethics rules, which ban officials from receiving just about any gifts.

Wait, wait, wait: lawmakers are using loopholes in which to gain an advantage? Man, how crazy. I’ve totally never heard of something like this in U.S. government. Somebody get Obama on the phone this instant.

It happened again last night. Two calls — Ryan Howard’s catch that wasn’t a catch in the sixth inning; an eighth-inning double play turned by the Yankees that wasn’t a double play because Chase Utley was safe at first, which robbed us of Howard facing Mariano Rivera with runners on first and third with two outs and the Phillies down 3-1 — went the wrong way.

Twitter exploded, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver agreed that these were not the correct calls. I’ve been a proponent of instant replay before. And I’m going to lobby for it again.

First, as PostmanE wrote last night, this Bud Selig explanation about why baseball won’t institute further instant replay is bunk:

“I think my position has been clear,” Selig said. “This is a game of pace. I’m worried a lot about that.”

Selig is against delaying a game for a few minutes and making a pitcher wait while a decision is made. MLB began to use replay in August 2008 and was the last of the four major sports to employ some form of replay to correct calls.

“You’re always concerned about pace,” Selig said. “You’re always concerned about how the game goes. And I haven’t changed my mind at all.”

Come on, Bud. Baseball gets its “pace” interrupted all the time. Players can call timeout pretty much whenever they want. There is no shot clock, there are no minutes ticking down until the end of the half. If a call is bad enough, a manager will go out and argue for (sometimes) several minutes. Couldn’t we instead use that time to figure out if a call is right or not? Shouldn’t that be baseball’s most paramount concern? Getting the call right? And what’s the difference between a pitcher waiting for an instant replay call, and waiting for a manager to stop yelling at an ump? Both disrupt the flow of the game.

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I suppose I had too high of expectations for Ozzie Guillen’s analyst debut last evening. But really, what was there to expect? He wasn’t going to cuss. He wasn’t going to go on some long-winded rant. This isn’t the dugout hours before a game where he can kick back and let loose; the soundbites here are just quick filler before FOX jets off to yet another commerical break before the game starts.

That being said: Guillen’s debut was a debut. He fidgeted with the mic chord, and his answers to some of the questioned posed to him weren’t that sharp. He seemed a bit out of place, though he made up for that with some humor.

One surprise, though: Guillen is a big fan of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez — and he’s an American League guy, after all — but he went with the Phillies in six. “I love the way they play the game,” he said.

And the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense. Guillen would love a team like this Philadelphia squad because I think their perception is how he wants his White Sox teams to be perceived: great team chemistry, guys that like each other, good pitching, a lineup that has depth. (And coincidentally enough, this Phillies team led the NL in homers, something Guillen’s have done in the AL, and entire league, before.)

Anyway, yeah, I enjoyed watching Guillen in his brief camera time last evening, even if he wasn’t overly impressive. And he’s got a few more games this series to get a better hang of it.

This prediction is entirely self-serving. I know the Phillies are very good, they’re back here again, they have great chemistry, they’re a team of destiny, their pitching staff is better than last year, as is their team. It will not surprise me if they win the World Series. It would be a terrific win for the organization if they beat the Mighty Yankees. It’s certainly better than beating the Rays a season ago. (I know a World Series title is a World Series title any way you slice it, but I’m betting it will be sweeter for Philadelphia fans if they beat the Yankees. Just a hunch.)

BUT, setting aside all that, I just can’t help it: I’d like to see the Yankees win. Their lineup is freaking ridiculous. And, I’d like to see Alex Rodriguez continue to motor through the postseason like he did in the ALDS and ALCS. I’d like to see him crowned MVP. I’d like to see some sort of bottom-of-the-ninth heroics in Game 7, and him being crowned king. These sort of moments are rare, I know. But that’s what I’m rooting for, so that’s what I’m going to predict, even if those two things don’t always line up.

And with that bit of gusto, I now completely expect A-Rod to go 0-for-the-series, while making three errors. This is how these things work, no?

If you’ve stepped outside recently — and you don’t live in a place like Southern California, Texas or Florida — you may have noticed it’s the fall, and temperatures are colder than they were during the summer and the baseball regular season. As for me, I’ve been inside since last winter; I’ve forgotten what the sun looks like, and what wind feels like ripping off the lake. (SOMEONE PLEASE COME UNLOCK MY BEDROOM DOOR.)

Anyway, yes: since the World Series is going to run into November this year — stupid World Baseball Classic — how is this going to affect the players? The game? Little Timmy sitting with his father at Yankee Stadium? And how does cold weather affect baseball in general?

We turn to Clay Davenport of Baseball Prosecptus ($) for the answers:

In some ways, cool weather helps the pitcher. The air gets denser when it gets colder; denser air means more drag on the baseball, giving fly balls less carry and curveballs more bite. Home runs drop by 17 percent in games in which the temperature is less than 60 degrees; instant runs turn into fly-ball outs. On the down side, the temperature affects hands. Pitchers lose control (issuing 15 percent more walks in cold games), and fielders commit more errors. The net result on runs per nine innings is that they stay almost the same. But there’s more to weather than temperature.

So yeah, there are advantages (and disadvantages) to both the offense and defense in cold weather. But Davenport also notes there should be a stiff breeze blowing in from left during Game 1, Game 2, Game 4, Game 5 and possibly Game 3.

Does that mean mighty Alex Rodriguez won’t continue to hit home runs at an alarming rate? Maybe. But he won’t be the only one having trouble knocking the ball out of the park.

If you’re Brett Myers with a cigar in hand after you’ve just clinched a spot in the World Series, then heavens no:

Last night, a 22-year-old Phillies fan had just about the silliest, most ridiculous night possible. First, he goes to Game 2 of the NLDS while wearing a rubber skull mask with “PHILLEY” painted on it. Despite living near Philadelphia and being a huge Phillies fan, he apparently is unaware that the common colloquialism is spelled, “Philly,” not “Philley.” Admittedly, that’s a minor nitpick when we consider his actions over the course of the night.

So there he is, sitting in the nosebleed seats while wearing a skull mask. He tells people that he’s the “Rockie Killer,” which is a dubious claim seeing as there were no Rockies in the nosebleed seats to kill to begin with. Eventually, this gentleman was kicked out of the stadium for starting a ruckus.

But he didn’t leave Citizens Bank Park. This is where it gets amazing.

Apparently, Mervine, who wore a rubber skull mask to yesterday’s game against the Rockies, found his way to the Phillies offices after being kicked out of the game with other fans who were being too boisterous, police said.

[...] In the office, he put his mask and rally towel down on a desk, but after picking them up, he also picked up the envelope with the [Phillies' World Series] rings, police said.

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