As the youngest of three, born into a family that comes together most animatedly when discussing a TV show or sports, I can tell you that the beginning of fall is the time when we become especially alive.
Since fall officially fell last Thursday, nary a day has gone by during which I haven't received a phone call, text message or e-mail from somebody in my family -- just to talk sports.
Yea, we're weird, but don't fault us for that. There's simply too much good sports going on right now.
We'll start with a call from my dad early on in the weekend when we discussed, among other things, the baseball playoff races. While most mass media coverage puts football as its main event for the weekend, look for the return of baseball to prime-time this week. I know for most sports viewers aged 18 to 22, I'll get as good a following as Will Ferrell did in "Old School" when he wanted to go streaking through the quad and up to the gymnasium. But I'm okay with that. People will see that baseball truly captivates fans in the fall, and this year, I've got a feeling we're in for a treat.
This week is the last leg of the marathon known as the Major League Baseball regular season, and we've still got some major players in the race. The AL wild card, AL East, and NL wild card are all races with at most a two-game difference between the top-two teams, as of yesterday. It used to be that the last week of the MLB was like the calm before the storm of playoffs. This year, the race up to the playoffs could very well be as exciting as the playoffs themselves. Most of the attention is going to fall on the Yankees-Red Sox season-closing, three-game series in Boston this weekend, but the White Sox-Indians series has the potential to be just as compelling. Needless to say, my young eyes and mind will be glued to the TV this weekend, taking in a healthy dose of baseball and football.
Which brings me to Exhibit B of how fall sports put a hop in my family's collective step. Monday morning, I received an e-mail from my brother (a far better writer than I am), who lives on the Left Coast, asking for help in deciphering the NFL and our beloved Carolina Panthers. Words like "flummoxed" and "hollow" were thrown around. He couldn't quite understand the fickle nature of the Panthers, a team that could sandwich a convincing win over the defending champs between two stupid, last-second losses.
Yes, the NFL is hitting second gear, when die-hard fans are looking anywhere for answers, when, truth be told, Weeks One through Three rarely are a good barometer for how a team will fare. But that's the beauty of it all: In a league where the Bungals can start out 3-0, anything can happen. So, brethren, sit tight and stayed tuned.
Moving on to Exhibit C: the Virginia football game on Saturday. My mom had to follow the game from Charlotte, where a Virginia-Duke football game has less TV clout than "Wheel of Fortune." So she sent me several text messages asking about everything from the weather to the game to the tailgates. The weather was perfect -
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