Odds and ends...

Hoping to get on to a more regular schedule soon - I had a system crash a week ago that took me a while to recover from...

• Scott Podsednik had 507 at-bats this year without a HR. There have been over 300 500+ AB homerless seasons, but only 26 in the last 25 years. But he hit his 2nd homerun of the post-season last night, becoming the first man ever, in the history of baseball, to have 500+ homerless at-bats in the regular season then hit 2 in the post-season. Only 1 player previously, Lance Johnson in 1993, had ever hit even 1 post-season homer following a 500+ AB homerless season.



• Why was Peter Pettigrew in Gryffindor? Did the sorting hat just screw up? And what about Percy Weasley? Doesn't everything we've seen from him just scream out "Slytherin?"



• The NY Giants yesterday did exactly what I thought the Patriots were going to do last week - come back in the late stages of the game and beat Denver. The Patriots chances ended on 2 plays in the 4th quarter. On a 1st and 10 with 4 minutes left, Brady hit David Givens, who was wide open at about midfield, and no one who could stop him from getting inside the Denver 40, and Givens dropped the ball. He had at least 10 yards and no one between him and the sideline, and he just dropped it. On the next play, Denver blitzed and Brady was called for intentional grounding. When they didn't convert on 3rd and 20, they were forced to punt, and they never got the ball back. Before the Givens drop, I was convinced that they were headed for a score to tie it up...



• The more we see, the more the Harriet Miers nomination looks like an unmitigated disaster. What on earth was the President thinking? Was this a nomination based entirely on her views of the executive powers in wartime? In any event, there's a difference between "unqualified" and "bad pick" - I'm still not certain of the former, but there's no question that she's the latter...