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It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Just like that we’re fully back to our regularly scheduled programming. I’ve gotta say, I missed this, but I’m also glad that I wasn’t here to write about Tampa Bay’s 11-game losing streak or the elimination of both Florida teams from playoff contention. You were spared my regular season woes (and the sobbing that would go with it), but now you’ve gotta endure my complaining about postseason results. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Here we are at the middle of the 2009 MLB season and things could not be more different than I expected. Dark horse candidates lead wild cards, division standings are mostly in shambles, it’s just not what most anyone predicted. Let’s take a look at the current standings: AL East Yankees Red Sox 1GB Rays 4.5GB Blue Jays 10.5GB Orioles 15GB ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Another month of baseball has passed and it’s a testament to the sport that things have gotten a bit crazy. As I write this on Tuesday, the standings look a little something like this: AL East Yankees Red Sox Blue Jays Rays Orioles AL Central Tigers White Sox Twins Royals Indians AL West Rangers Mariners Angels Athletics NL East Phillies Mets Braves Marlins Nationals ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. 15 April may mean the tax man is coming around, but I like to think of it from a better perspective: Jackie Robinson Day. That’s right, on 15 April 1947 Jackie Robinson debuted for the Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers, finally breaking the color barrier in baseball and paving the way for civil rights in America. Jackie Robinson was a hero and I’m glad that baseball honors him each year on this day by allowing players to wear Robinson’s league-wide retired #42. ...

Everyone loves web gems, it’s an immutable fact of life. In honor of that fact, I’d like to start posting the gems of the day on the blog as often as I can, hopefully daily. I have no idea if ESPN will keep these videos up beyond this season, but until then, hopefully plenty of people will get the chance to enjoy these great plays. My favorite from today’s batch: without a doubt, Torii Hunter’s diving catch TOWARD THE WALL(!) and Evan Longoria’s smooth, clean fielding of a ball in what could even be shortstop territory. ...

I really thought by this point we’d be completely done with the Division Series games, but now we’ve still got another day, at the very least, for the ALDS series. Philadelphia finally turned in its win and gave us what we expected. They beat the Brew Crew 6-2 and now don’t have any games until Thursday when they will be starting their NLCS series against the Dodgers at home. Josh Beckett remarkably managed to not put together as solid an outing as he usually does, so the 11-game win postseason win streak against the Angels ended as LA put up a 5-4 win in the 12th. They play again tonight to see if they can lock it down. Lester gets the nod for pitching and he’s been doing well so far. ...

It was National League day last night in the LDS series and both the Brewers and Cubs faced elimination with a loss. Milwaukee was luckier, getting the home field nod, but the Cubs were headed to hostile Dodger territory face to face with the culmination of their hundred year curse. It’s hard to deal with 100 years of pressure and expectations and the Cubs showed their inability to clinch further rounds of playoff eligibility by losing 1-3 to the Dodgers last night and prolonging the curse, despite having the best record in the National League. There goes that prediction for me! ...

Another day another pair of division games, this time exclusively ALDS games. With these two the Division Series are all looking rather one-sided. Thanks to the always clutch hitting of Dioner Navarro, the Rays were able to start posting runs and making up the two run deficit that Kazmir rounded up in Game 2 of their series. After scoring two in the first, the White Sox are unable to answer any of the next six runs scored by the Rays. They win it 6-2 and push their lifetime postseason record to 2-0. ...

What a great day for baseball yesterday was! Boston had a bye today (lucky them and lucky Beckett), the Rays and Evan Longoria made franchise history, and the NLDS races are starting to look a bit more one-sided. We start in Philadelphia with the Brew Crew putting its faith in C.C. Sabathia to even out the series. What happened instead was a Shane Victorino grand slam that kept the Phillies up above the Brewers for a 5-2 finish. ...

I know I promised you some simulated game results to go along with my post-game analysis, but as I booted up MLB Power Pros 2008 and started to rearrange the final team rosters, it quickly became apparent to me that I would be much better served just waiting until we had World Series teams so I’d only have to do two (for those of you playing at home, I only managed to set up the Red Sox before I gave up). ...