On Baseball

1. ESPN.com's die-hard Red Sox fan Bill Simmons writes at length on Manny Ramirez's 2008 season, pinning the blame for the souring of the relationship between Manny and the Red Sox on super-agent Scott Boras.

That didn't stop Boston's hierarchy from ignoring Boras' behavior on the grassy knoll and directing everyone's malice toward Lee Harvey Ramirez in the book depository.

2. Speaking of Manny, how nice has it been to have the Dodgers actually performing well in the postseason? They've won twice as many postseason games in the past two days than they had in nearly 20 years before that.

3. And if you're looking for an underdog to support, it's hard to find one better than the Tampa Bay Rays. In the ten previous years of their existence, they'd been simply awful, managing to finish out of last place just once, in 2004, and that was only three games out of the cellar. So after years of hearing that Tampa Bay had a lot of strong young talent, it's remarkable to see it finally coming together this year.