At least the football game was exciting, since I gave up on this game right around the third inning.

No, I’m with Grant on this one.  Being a Bears fan helped (well, for a while).

Crap.  Sorry, I did it again.  I come here first and then I check NBC.  I will read that post.

Re: The safe at second call during the Angels and Yankees games - I would love to review all the playoff double plays Jeter has technically not touched the bag but gotten the call.  If phantom tags are going to be allowed then the Aybar’s positioning was more than sufficient to get the call as I am sure Jeter has technically missed the bag countless times in all the playoff games he has played in.  That safe call is not made 99% of the time in regular season games as well as playoff games - so why in this game?  At that time?

My intention is not to slam Jeter (I’ll leave that for Craig over at NBC) but to point out the umpiring biases that exist in the game and the favoritism that certain players get as Maddux’s strike zone was generally bigger than other pitchers and Tony Gwynn not swinging at a close pitch meant it had to be a ball.  The fact that a playoff game could have been affected by such a call should get the attention of the league but because it didn’t impact the result of the game it will more than likely get pushed under the rug. 

My frustration is that this is another sign that something needs to be done to improve the quality of the umpiring, as evidenced by all the bad call in this years playoff alone, but my sense is that Bud Selig and the boys down at MLB will attempt to pull the wool over our eyes by telling us how great the games were and that baseball is a great sports.  While all that may be true - it does not address the issue and I am sure the Orioles fans wished that instant replay of HR calls was put into place prior to the 1996 season. 

My message to Bud.  Before another playoff game/series is tainted by a poor call - please do something about the umpiring or baseball will suffer from a lack of integrity in how calls are made and the conspiracy theorists will have enough evidence to argu the negative of baseballs louder than those of us who prefer to talk about the beauty of baseball.