Why are there four guys with horses hanging around outside my window?

I'm not much for "apocalyptic" thinking -- I haven't even read any of those Left Behind books -- but with war in the Middle East and with the Cubs and Red Sox closing in on pennants in the same year, well, call me slightly concerned.

Anyway, last night was a hell of a sports night. You had the Sox advancing in heart-stopping fashion (I didn't care who won, really, since I rather like both the A's and the Sox), loading the bases before finally notching that last out. And apparently you had the A's getting mad at the Sox' closer for some obscene gesture he made in their direction, although quite frankly I didn't see it -- it just looked like garden-variety fist pumping to me, nothing worse than Dennis Eckersley used to do when celebrating a final out in a big game. I will say that those constant cut-aways Fox did to some bar in Boston got a little annoying. Not that it matters, but my predictions are Yankees and Cubs, both in six, and then the Yankees again in five.

(And if you're not reading Mike's Baseball Rants, you're missing out on Blogistan's best baseball commentary. Not only does he know his subject well -- he'll collate stats like any fine baseball fanatic should -- but his pop-culture knowledge is so good that he can actually remember not just that there was a movie called The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, but he can remember the characters well enough to draw parallels to the 2003 Braves squad! So go read that blog, now that the LCS's are about to start.)

(Grammatical question: What's the possessive of "Sox"? Above, should I refer to the "Sox's closer", or the "Sox' closer"? Or should I avoid the entire thing by saying "Boston's closer"?)

After the baseball game ended, I watched a bit of Letterman -- a bit of an off night for Dave, but he's still worth catching for the current nightly regimen of George W. Bush speech tics -- and then a bit of Leno, whose "Headlines" bit still tends to crack me up. (Last night's gem was a story about two would-be bank robbers who thought that if they rubbed their faces with lemon juice, the security cameras' pictures of them would be blurry. Oh, and the headline about Congress's pasing of legislation for the "Do Not Kill List". As Jay said, "You might want to get on that list.") Then, I just flipped over to watch the last three minutes or so of the Buccaneers' thrashing of the Indianapolis Colts, who had been down 28-7 last time I had checked. They were still down, 35-21. Then they were down 35-28. Then they tied the thing. I didn't stay up for overtime, but I saw this morning that the Colts eventually prevailed, apparently as a result of a weird rule that I've never heard of.

Two observations from that game:

1. On the Colt's second-to-last touchdown, how on Earth could the Bucs' cornerback let the Colts' receiver just race by him like that, right from the line of scrimmage? Don't they play bump-and-run anymore?

2. In a weird bit of symmetry, the Colts' first and last touchdowns in the fourth quarter were identical: one yard runs, right up the middle, with both plays being marked by the Bucs being off-sides. The second time, I thought I was watching a replay of the first one. Very odd.

I'm kind of wondering, now, if Tampa Bay's defense might be slightly overrated. Yeah, it was a one-game aberration, but still -- they coughed up 35 points at home, and they only managed one sack against a team that had to rely on the passing game because they were missing their starting running back. And I'm starting to like the combination of Al Michaels and John Madden, especially since Madden seems to have lost his fascination with that horrible "Coach's Clicker" thing. (I'm the only person I know who can stand Madden's voice, for some reason.) Their best exchange came when the Colts' comeback was well in progress. Madden pointed out that Bucs' coach Jon Gruden is one of those coaches who gets up incredibly early and gets almost no sleep during the football season; he said "Gruden's been up since 3:30 this morning," and Michaels quipped, "And after watching this one, he'll be up until 3:30 Wednesday morning."