Baseball is a different game in October

Monday Night Football was on one TV channel, baseball another.

From this viewer's perspective, it's what you call your basic mismatch.

In my house, football wins that head-to-head battle nine out of 10 times.

Any other month that is, but this one.

Monday night, I watched the Red Sox beat the Angels in Game 4 of the American League Division Series. I only switched to the Vikings-Saints game between innings.

As a result, I missed live coverage of one of Reggie Bush's breakaway punt returns (that's what highlights are for), but I think I saw every pitch from Fenway Park. I know I watched each at-bat.

This isn't like me; I've got an itchy clicker finger. But, then, playoff baseball doesn't remotely resemble the regular-season variety.

Does anyone still sit at home and watch all nine innings of a regular-season game? Maybe you do if you're above a certain age. It's not for no reason that TV runs between-inning ads for Viagra and Flomax.

There's no need for Sominex to buy advertising time, though, because for most of the season, baseball itself is a nap aid. It's different in the postseason, a time when baseball has the power to create rich theater.

From April until the end of September, what baseball lacks, of course, is any hint of urgency. The schedule was never designed to be compelling; it offers a comforting, monotonous rhythm to hardcore fans. It is what it is.

For the less hardcore, trying to sweat out an entire spring and summer of daily and nightly baseball would be like being stuck in line at the DMV.

According to the demographics, somebody my age ought to be more in sync with baseball's relaxed tempo. But while I may be a member of AARP, nothing makes my ADHD flare up faster than your run-of-the-mill, who-cares-who-wins game. And baseball's got hundreds of them each season.

As much as anyone, I laughed at what college football commentator Beano Cook said in 1981 when commissioner Bowie Kuhn promised lifetime baseball passes to the U.S. hostages released from Iran:

"Haven't they suffered enough?"

It's a classic line, but it doesn't apply to October baseball.

Though the stakes increase even more when the Dodgers and Phillies open National League Championship Series play Thursday, less-than-robust TV ratings are usually a demoralizing subtext to postseason baseball.

Viewership, though, doesn't reflect on the quality of the product. Tampa Bay is a buzz kill for TV, yet the Rays are an attractive - if unfamiliar - collection of young talent that includes Chesapeake's B.J. Upton.

The Rays would appear to be underdogs to Boston, yet Tampa Bay took 10 of 18 from the Red Sox this year. The Rays are inexperienced, but in closing out the White Sox in Chicago on Monday with the help of a pair of Upton home runs, they showed a lot of poise.

Next comes the real test for Tampa Bay: No team the past few years has handled postseason expectations better than the Red Sox. Once, Boston was noted for blowing the big opportunity. Since 2004, the franchise's time-worn fatalism has changed to deserved optimism. Now the Sox are expected to find a way to win.

When Boston scratched across the winning run in the ninth inning against the Angels, I kept my finger off the remote and watched the celebration taking place at Fenway Park.

Football could wait. For a night, baseball was the show.

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373, bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com