Fifty-four years ago today ...

As we suffer through yet another day of financial anxiety - and wait for the baseball playoffs to begin - here's a welcome flashback to those days of yesterday. Come, children, gather around the computer screen and watch the greatest catch in baseball history, courtesy of one Willie Howard Mays Jr. in the 1954 World Series.

One hell of a (half) year ...

Baseball is my favorite sport of choice, if that hasn't been made plainly obvious here already. But even non-sports fans have to appreciate the number of epic, all-or-nothing events that already have pocked the athletic landscape in a year that has is barely half over. We have witnessed a Super Bowl that literally went to the last minute before the "other" team won. An NCAA basketball final that went to overtime. A U.S. Open tournament in which the best golfer of all time, playing on one leg, was pushed to a fifth round, and them some, before proving exactly why he is the best golfer of all time. A Stanley Cup Final contest that went three overtimes. Just on Friday, a Nathan's Hot Dog Eating championship that was decided by a "dog-off". (Don't ask.) And this morning, a Wimbledon men's final that squeezed all of the life out of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and the fading London sun before Nadal won in five grueling sets to end Federer's outstanding winning streak on the grass of the All England Lawn and Croquet Club.

All of which bodes well for the second half of 2008, which will include the Beijing Olympics (Who will win? Who will drop dead of respiratory arrest?), the World Series (where a certain team will end a certain century-long streak of futility - right?) and, of course, Alex Rodriguez's impending divorce. Who will buy the naming rights to that one?