OK, OK, I'll drag myself away from the Data Table I'm working on...

The Angels win the first one, behind Paul Byrd.

No truth to the rumours that Chuck Finley is starting the second game.

The fifteenth most-common North American surname is "Harris." Honestly, it's not a sexy baseball name. Now, if we were talking gridiron, as in the NFL, we'd have a running back named Franco and a defensive back named Cliff in our Hall of Fame and All-Pro coffers, with one of the first black quarterbacks, James, also a Pro Bowler, along for the ride.

But for baseball? Well, the biggest name is that of a Hall of Famer, sure, but a manager -- Bucky. Actually, like his (Sparky) Anderson predecessor, Bucky Harris was also a starting 2B in the big leagues, but where the Andersons had Garrett and Brady and a few other guys to populate the lineup, the case can be made that Bucky, at .274 over parts of 12 seasons, is actually the best hitter -- even the best player -- on an All-Harris team.

And then there were four...

As pointed out by King Ryan, Baseball Reference now has 2005 stats available. Yes, I'm excited by this. Yes, I am a geek.

So does anyone still want to replace Miguel Batista with Kyle Farnsworth?

Lewis and Clark .... because these two names, while not quite adjacent on the list of most common North American surnames (Clark is at #21, while Lewis lags a bit at #23), are so indelibly tied together historically, here we present BOTH the All-Lewis and All-Clark Hall of Names teams.

Alternate spellings are not eligible; so the 18 Clarkes, including HOF manager Fred Clarke, are right out. However, the Acting Commissioner should these teams ever play each other, of course, would be HOF OF Louis Clark Brock. Sure, he spells his given name differently than the surname in question, but close enough!

"Close enough"? Boy, good thing those explorer guys named Lewis and Clark didn't say that before finishing their cross-country trek.

As always ...

This is the first of three articles that attempts to discuss -- and rank -- the greatest hits in post-season history. Not the greatest games, per se, but the most important individual hits that were the most pivotal in baseball playoff history.

This installment covers the Division Series, which occurred on a one-time basis in 1981 and has been a permanent part of the baseball landscape from 1995 through the present.

Comments -- and debate -- are most welcome!

On Sunday morning, Tom Cheek lost his long struggle with cancer.

There are places I'll remember
All my life
Though some have changed

Well, that was lively.

The twelfth most common surname in North America is "Thomas." That's as a last/family name. The thing about "Thomas" is that it's also the tenth most common male first (given) name, and as such, also a pretty damn common middle name, though there aren't any obvious and relaiable statistics on that last point.

Speaking of points, the point here is that while there have been 38 big-league ballplayers -- the same number of instances the #11 name Anderson had, just as the #9 and #10 names, Moore and Taylor, each had exactly 47 apiece -- there have been far more with that appellation as a first or middle name.

In fact, even if you count only players who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame or made an All-Star team (thus ignoring virtually every first/middle-named Thomas who played before 1933), there have been 26 with the first name Thomas and 21 more with that middle name.

Perhaps here we should engage in a bit of, er, Thomistic clarification ...

Wow. You can't make this stuff up. The Red Sox are now in Year 1 of waiting for The Next Championship, scheduled for 2090 (every 86 years), while their AL East pals in pinstripes gave back what they took away from the Angels -- home field advantage -- after just a single day. Aaron Small is human, after all, choosing his post-season debut to break up his personal 10-0 Yankee perfect record. The Bosox/Chisox recap follows behind the "More" link, but feel free to comment on either game, kids.

THere is another installment in what will surely turn out be a multi-part series: let's think of it as a Post-Mortem Analysis of the 2005 Blue Jays.

How did the Blue Jays compare to their division rivals in scoring and preventing runs? Click on “more” and find out.