Stuff that occurred to me in my five minutes of down time during the best time of year in sports. Well, except for the high school basketball tournament. And the first round of March Madness. And baseball's opening day. And …

• The same loyalty to his players and faith in the managerial book that make Terry Francona great are what force the rest of us to make sure we're stocked up on booze and antacids.

Letting Dice-K reappear for the bottom of the eighth after 45 minutes of Tampa Bay's scratching, spitting, hand-wringing and Frank TV promos?

Enlisting the 14-year-old smiling choirboy, Justin Masterson, to confront Evan Longoria with one out and the tying run on base?

Was he high?

I'll never understand most of Tito's maneuvers. I'd be afraid to repeat them in a friendly game of Strat-O-Matic. All I know is that lack of experience and protection in the middle of the lineup be damned, no team is better prepared for the rigors of October baseball than the Boston Red Sox.

• Not that it matters now that the Phillies are well on their way to a four-game mercy killing, five at worst, but Derek Lowe scares me infinitely more than Manny Ramirez in a potential Sox-Dodgers series. D-Lowe is the third-best money pitcher still alive in baseball's postseason, and he's the only guy capable of out-dueling Jon Lester and/or Josh Beckett twice in a seven-game stare down.

• Pitching wins in the playoffs. Forever and ever. Amen.

• My colleague Randy Whitehouse penned the definitive treatise on hideous announcing in this space three weeks ago. But how in the name of all that is decent and holy did he forget Chip Caray? Scary part is, because he's the only surviving member of what I guess is considered a royal family in baseball broadcasting, the Chipster will be allowed to keep his seat on the gravy train in perpetuity.

• Everything that's wrong with and unwatchable about playoff baseball, in one anecdote:

I covered a Leavitt-Hampden Academy football game on the night of Game 2 of the American League Division Series.

Left Bangor at 11:25 p.m., with Dice-K sweating through his customary parade of 3-2 counts and runners at the corners (doesn't every Matsuzaka inning automatically start that way?) in the bottom of the fifth inning.

Drove 95 miles and coasted into my driveway in Monmouth at 12:45 a.m.

In the bottom of the eighth.

• So let me get this straight.

L.T. is limping around like Joe Paterno. Shawne Merriman's dancing is limited to the opening credits of Madden '09. Philip Rivers still acts like a frat boy in desperate need of an anger management class, and nobody's sure who'll be catching his passes Sunday.

And the San Diego Chargers are still roughly a touchdown favorite and the national media's near-unanimous choice to whip the Patriots tonight.

If only the perpetually overrated, underachieving Bolts received that much benefit of the doubt from their own, um, rabid fan base. Not until Wednesday were enough tickets sold to lift the local blackout for NBC's national broadcast.

• Texas 45, Oklahoma 35. Big Game Bob Stoops strikes again.

Please, God, make every college football team lose at least one game before Halloween, just to demonstrate the absurdity of the BCS system. As if last year didn't convince anyone with even one cell lingering in the portion of the brain that provides sanity and rational thought.

• Spectator quote of the school year so far, heard at Saturday's Oak Hill-Maranacook football game: "Hey, ref, are you telling me you didn't hear that kid swear? Are you sh----n' me?"

• NHL hockey in the Czech Republic, huh? I guess when the Give-A-Crap meter in the States registers 1-out-of-750,000 people and your television contract is with the Hallmark Channel, ya do what ya gotta do.

• Finally watched my first major mixed martial arts event when they gave it to me free, which was the only way it was ever going to happen. So that's what all the fuss was about with Kimbo Slice, huh? Tougher than a box of hammers, that guy.

• I know the economy stinks. I know we're all going to lose our life savings, pay $6 a gallon for gas and experience a sudden, penniless death. So stop interrupting the Notre Dame-North Carolina game to tell me, already.