Wow, anybody get the number of that Red Sox express that absolutely steamrolled Colorado and any shot I had at prognosticating my way up to the show?

While everybody agrees that the Sox were the better team, the Rockies got bit by the same bug that bit the Tigers the year before; both were punished for earlier success and forced to sit around waiting for an interminable amount of time while their eventual World Series opponent stayed in a groove, playing right up to Game 1.

Look, we don't live in a perfect world so I can't expect a perfect system, but c'mon, a 10-day layoff before the biggest series of your professional career? It's a bit much to expect, and as Major League Baseball has tweaked and diddled with its postseason scheduling to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of the revenue stream they've seemed to send a big, red up-yours to fans who don't want to wait for days and weeks while any flicker of interest they had in the World Series is slowly, inexorably snuffed out.

Revenues are up, attendance is up, everything is up. Just ask Bud Selig: he'll happily tell you. But the postseason system in baseball is a farce, conjured up by 21st century alchemists twisting cowhide and ash into dollars and cents solely for the profit and pleasure of owners and a league that too-quickly has forgotten what we, the fans, have not; that the success they now so happily enjoy was built on a sham of a decade with performance-enhancers aplenty as its foundation. Revenues aren't everything; every once in a great while, integrity counts for something as well.

Speaking of integrity, Barry Bonds was indicted last week on four counts of perjury and one of obstruction of justice. Bonds' lawyers are saying all the right things, that they'll poke holes all through the prosecution's case, largely thanks to a steroids test that Bonds purportedly failed in 2000-2001. Bonds' lawyers will work hard to show that the prosecution's case is a house of cards, wobbly at the top and wobbly at the bottom; a couple good knocks, the defense hopes, and the whole thing should come tumbling down. Maybe. Or maybe there's a good reason federal prosecutors have a 90% conviction rate and maybe that good reason is they don't bring cases to trial unless they have a pretty good idea they can win. At this point, it only really matters for one person, whoever that lucky sap was that came down with homerun 762. Given that the current unpleasantness dramatically reduces the chances of any team owner signing Bonds to a contract (largely because the Dolan family doesn't own a baseball team), his career is now officially done. And a done career means 762 IS the new record.

Speaking of new records, all signs point to Alex Rodriguez resigning with the New York Yankees for another 10 years for about $275 million. Who helped bring this about, you ask? None other than billionaire investor and philanthropist, Warren Buffett. According to reports first published in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday, Rodriguez contacted Buffett shortly after his agent, Scott Boras, announced his client's intention to opt out of the remaining three years of his then-record, $252 million contract, during game four of the World Series. Apparently hurt and chastised at the public outcry surrounding his incredibly tasteless move, A-Rod started shopping around for advice on how to make it right. Buffett reportedly suggested A-Rod cut his agent out of the loop and get on the phone with the only team rich and nuts enough to talk to him: the Yankees. So the Yankees get their All-World third-baseman locked up for the next decade, A-Rod gets to break all the records he's predicted to break in pinstripes, Scott Boras gets his comeuppance, and Warren Buffett gets to dabble in sports management. Personally, everything going on up there in the Bronx is getting just too weird for me.

Speaking of weird, the Redskins only ran the ball 17 times on Sunday, and two of those were scrambles by Jason Campbell. Meanwhile, they threw the ball with something approaching Martz-ian abandon, chucking the ol' pigskin 54 times. I was never particularly good at figurin', but that looks an awful lot like a 3:1 pass-to-run ratio, hardly the balanced attack we've been hearing so much about from the Redskins propaganda department. That didn't take long. Somebody's finally convinced the old-folks home running the Redskins that Hogs and three-yards-and-a-pile-of-dust football went out with the brontosaurus and the Model-T. After forcing their offense to batter their collective heads against a brick wall for the better part of a year and a half, it looks like the coaches may have finally taken a look at the team they'd assembled and realized that it was a pass-first, run-later kind of team, something more closely resembling the team Steve Spurrier always so openly lusted after, rather than the step-on-others-teams'-throats, smashmouth kind of team the Burgundy and Gold made famous back in the 80's and early 90's.

Well of course, they'll say, it's all part of the plan. It's all part of the strategy.

Fine. Whatever. Bottom line, the 'Skins may have lost to the Cowboys, but they almost pulled it out, and what emerged on the offensive side of the ball was very interesting indeed. Stay tuned.