Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is tired. Very very tired. And he blames baseball. Yes, baseball my minions. He has watched lots and lots of baseball. All these 6 hour long Red Sox/Yankees games are making your Maximum Leader tired, cranky, and in a mood not fit for blogging.

But here he is anyway answering the call of his readership.

First to the easy stuff…

Huzzah for the Packers! Your Maximum Leader didn’t think you would be able to pull it off against the somehow resurgent Lions. That said, the Packers are still playing without a secondary. That does not bode well for their long-term prospects.

You know something though. Your Maximum Leader is happy for the Detroit Lions. He thinks Steve Mariucci is a great coach. He was treated badly by the 49ers. It is good to see him turning around a team with som talent. (Also, your Maximum Leader is enjoying seeing the 49ers languish.)

Huzzah for the Redskins! They didn’t look very good playing against the Bears. But the odds were on someone winning. (Your Maximum Leader knows they could have tied, but the ODDS were on one team winning.) The Skins still don’t have an offensive line that can block. Brunnell doesn’t look very sharp. And Clinton Portis is looking more and more like a product of a great system (in Denver). That said, your Maximum Leader is well aware that Portis rushed for over 100 yards. That is good, but it speaks more to the inability of the Bears to stop the run than the Redskins’ ability to run. Washington’s defence looks very good.

By the way. Read Gregg Easterbrook’s TMQ column on NFL.com for the best football commentary around.

On to baseball…

Well, lets make one little pit stop to say… Hockey still locked out. Your Maximum Leader has yet to care. Perhaps he’ll start to miss it after the Superbowl in January? Who knows.

Now baseball.

Is your Maximum Leader the only one who wonders why someone would pay over $100,000 for Barry Bond’s 700th Home Run ball? In your Maximum Leader’s mind, the only ball that Barry will hit that is worth that money (barring he breaks the single season record again) will be number 756. That, dear minions, is the ball worth the money. That ball will be the historic one.

Surely both the National and American League Championship Series are doing their best to provide great baseball on a whole bunch of different levels.

Level 1: Great baseball rivalry resulting in great baseball. (At least in the AL.) If you like baseball it doesn’t get much more gripping than it has over the past few days. Everything people around the world love about baseball has been on display. Pressure. Clutch performances. Men-in-scoring-position-with-2-outs-and-a-slugger-at-bat. It is just awesome.

Level 2: Players stepping up and performing. Curt Schilling playing hurt. David Ortiz’s many clutch hits. And Hideki Matsui is a beast! Jeff Kent’s walk-off homer. Carlos Beltran becoming an offensive giant.

Level 3: Time, time, time. This is a bad level. Damn all these games for pushing the endurance of fans and players alike. Your Maximum Leader needs his sleep! Of course, this is mostly the fault of the ALCS. But really, AL games always take longer than NL games. Who knew that in the championship that would be magnified by a factor of two or three? At this point the players on the Boston and New York teams must be punch drunk from all the play they’ve put in already.

Level 4: These great games still show how screwed up MLB can be. Scheduling games at the same time? And only letting one “network” broadcast the game? What the hell is up with that?

Now let the prognosticating and ranting begin!

First off, if the Boston/New York game is rained out tonight, your Maximum Leader predicts that the Yankees will win when they play on Wednesday. Right now your Maximum Leader believes the series will go to the Yankees, but he recognizes that the Red Sox have momentum. These players are, as stated before, punch drunk. But Boston has been landing the last punches. And that counts for something. If they get a night off to rest and recouperate, that momentum goes away. If they play tonight, it is hard to predict what will happen. (Although we can predict that it will take a very long time to happen.) But give the Yankees some rest, and they win the next game. If they play tonight, the Sox might push it to game 7. And then it is anyone’s guess how it will turn out. Your Maximum Leader hopes the Sox can do it.

And how about the Houston/St. Louis series? Your Maximum Leader can hear one loyal minion (at least) cheering from here. Honestly, your Maximum Leader thought that the Cards were going to clean up against the Astros. he Cards, while not quite annointed, were certainly playing like they had a mission. Now their confidence appears to be a little shaken. The day off and the move back to St. Louis doesn’t really affect either team that much. Busch Stadium fans create lots of energy for their team. The Astros are probably feeling like they can take the Cards. The Cards may be wondering what happened. If that is the case, it can only help the Astros. Both of these teams are fighters. And they, unfortunately, are getting shafted by MLB.

Shafted by MLB you say? Yes. Shafted. Not quite to the stage of being cutlered. But shafted nonetheless. You see, the idiots in charge of the big leagues (yes that means you Bud!) awarded the TV contract to Fox. That is not the problem in and of itself. What is the problem is now you have games played at the same time on the same day. And if you don’t have cable, you’re screwed. You get what Fox dishes out. Most of the time that means Red Sox/Yankees. If you have cable or satellite you either flip back and forth, or you do the whole split screen thingie. (Split screen is the way your Maximum Leader was watching.) But it just isn’t right.

The league needs to think about a whole bunch of solutions. Your Maximum Leader will suggest a few: cut a few games off the regular season (like all those inter-league abominations) and start the playoffs earlier so that you don’t have games competing at the same time, go back to two divisions per league; and remove the wild card round; and spread out the games, or (your Maximum Leader’s personal favourite) real day games. (Start some games at 1pm people would dig it. Really! They would. Your Maximum Leader knows “the people.”)

Anyho…

Your Maximum Leader now grows tired. And must think of other posts.

Or watch some baseball.

Carry on.

UPDATE: Great post on the Sox/Yankees from Enoch Soames, Esq.