A few post-season baseball thoughts...

• For the Sox to extend the ALCS and bring it back to the Trop, a couple of things have to happen: Ellsbury, Ortiz and Varitek have to start to hit (2 for 38 combined in the series) and Daisuke has to resemble his game 1 performance and not what we have seen from the starters the last three days (12.41 combined ERA from Beckett, Lester and Wakefield).
• Every time I watch Greg Maddux pitch, I feel like I've just gotten a treat. Unfortunately, Rafael Furcal sort of messed things up for him in the 5th inning of game 5 of the NLCS with three errors leading to two unearned runs and put the Phillies up 5-0.
• I'm lucky enough to have watched all Big Three pitchers of the Braves playoff streak live. I saw Glavine against the Expos at Olympic Stadium in the mid-9os, John Smoltz last year against the Sox at Fenway, and and Maddux last summer, pitching for the Padres against the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.
• I'm not conceding anything given the history of 2004 and 2007, but I think Phillies-Rays could be a great World Series. Fox TV may hate it, as it's not going to attract the casual fan like Red Sox-Dodgers would, but these are two great teams with a lot of exciting players to watch. Any real baseball fan should enjoy watching these two teams go at it.
• It was 20 years ago today: Kirk Gibson hits his famous walkoff home run off Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series.