A small question for people who watch baseball

If you don't have skin in the game -- which is to say, at least serious money, but more likely a longtime love for the Red Sox, Rays, Dodger or Phillies laundry -- just how are you supposed to actually watch playoff baseball?

I'll let you into an inside glimpse of the miraculous life of the off-time sports blogger here, folks... it doesn't always work in real time, or in an efficient way. Sometimes, I get wiped out while writing and pass out. Which is what happened on Saturday night, after I did the Shooter Dad thing, then came back down to the Man Cave. I woke up as the Rays got to work in the bottom of the twelfth, with BJ Upton's pop up scoring the winning run.

So that game started at 8pm EST, and ended past 1:30am. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not sure if I've ever watched anything that took five and a half hours that didn't involve the birth of my kid, or perhaps experimental German cinema, or... well, nope. I got nothing.

Now, if you are involved, you don't care and I Just Don't Get It, but that's just it... I'm a heckuva lot more like the rest of the MLB fandom than you on this. And even if this had been a nine-inning game, it still would have taken way too damned long.

Who's to blame? Well, MLB starts it by cramming in extra commercials. The managers add on with multiple mound conferences and marginal pitching changes. Base runners trying to steal a base add tons of time from the increased pickoff throws. Hitters and pitchers stall and step off and out. Umpires don't move the game forward aggressively enough, for fear that they'll become the story -- and no ump wants that to happen in a playoff game. The fans for the most part, don't care, because they are that into the game; you don't go to a playoff game casually.

But in the meantime... well, I dare you to watch an MLB playoff game without something to do on the side. Like, well, blogging.

Or, more accurately, passing out while blogging.