I guess I boched my analysis of the tiebreaker situation yesterday, but I hardly feel like I'm alone in that. I miss the days of my youth when there were two leagues and four divisions. It was cool when the Cubs were in the East, and the White Sox were in the West. And Cincinnati and Atlanta were in the West too even though those cities are well east of Chicago and St. Louis. I'm nostalgic for baseball's old anachronisms; the new ones are more annoying than endearing.

Interesting game for Detroit today: They can knock the White Sox out of the playoffs, and they can avoid finishing in sole possession of last place in the AL Central. Seattle's more titanic collase overshadowed the Tigers' crummy season, but going into the year Detroit was picked as a division winner by just as many if not more prognosticators. Structurally, they had way more of a chance than the Mariners did of being good this year. I blame Jim Leyland.

My dad called Sunday, as he usually does in the fall, with a grim prediction for the Bears against the Eagles. According to a top secret inside source of his, he said, the Chicago football team wasn't well-enough conditioned to finish in the fourth quarter, explaining their last two losses. Well, they hung in well enough against Philadelphia. Kyle Orton can't throw a pass accurately more than 15 yards through the air, but that was never the point of Bear football anyway.