Baron, take all the issue you want with my rationale, and take the Hall of Fame's word (as you perceive it), or anyone else's. But the fact remains that playoff games to decide regular-season ties in baseball, such as the '51 or '62 playoffs between the Giants and Dodgers or the '78 playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox (the "Bucky Dent Game"), are regular season games.

Yes, they're called "playoffs," but they aren't playoff games in the sense of today's playoff system, which was 18 years away in 1951. From the point of view of that time, the World Series pitted the two regular-season champs. What they were doing in those "playoffs" was deciding the regular-season champs, so of course those were regular-season games.

Look at the 1951 standings, anywhere you can find them:

New York 98-59

Brooklyn 97-60

How'd they play 157 games in a 154-game season?

Now, did Fox not include the Miracle at Coogan's Bluff because they're such sticklers? I doubt it. One hint is Kennedy or Zelasko not explaining why they didn't use it, which would certainly be Kennedy's style. Another is Fox's attempt to pass off an actor dressed as Carlton Fisk as the real thing.

I'm guessing they left that HR off the list because either A) they didn't have easy access to the video or B) some suit decided nobody wanted to see black and white footage on prime-time TV.

I feel like we're talking across each other.

Look, I think Bobby Thomson's home run was one of the (very small number) greatest moments in the history of American sports. The only point I was making is it was properly not on a list of great postseason home runs because it didn't happen in the postseason.

It's not even a debatable point. It's just a fact you can look up. Saying the home run should have been on the Fox list is like saying a list of great NBA playoff performances is incomplete without Wilt's 100-point game. Wilt's game was magnificent. It just didn't happen in the playoffs.

And Fast Eddie, I STILL don't get what it was you were saying Fox would have done differently if the NLCS was Cubs-Dodgers.

Also, it's a stretch to say Houston and Chicago are two of the biggest media markets. Chicago's third, but Houston's only 10th. It's big, but not huge. And don't forget the White Sox are the No. 2 team in their market. Distant No. 2. I haven't seen any evidence that the Astros have captured America's imagination in any way. The Sox, a little, not much.

I think I could probably live with an instant replay system if it was what you guys are talking about. I wouldn't vote for it, but I could live with it. If it's a review ump in the booth, who, upon seeing something obvious, can signal to the field what the right call is.

My fear with this sort of thing is that it always seems to expand beyond its original parameters. Though I object to the delays the NFL's replay system causes, the crushing of atmosphere and momentum, that's actually not my biggest beef.

My big problem with it is it's changed the way officials call the game on the field, and its mission has expanded drastically. As Al Michaels pointed out on "Monday Night Football" a year or two ago, instant replay was intended to reverse obviously missed calls. Now it's used to parse ordinary calls. Those are hugely different things. The definition of a fumble -- on the field, not in the rulebook -- has changed in the last decade, as one example.

This is the last Editor's Choice letter for this column. From now on this thread won't be moderated.

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Keith: I used "orgy" last week. Actually I just think "sex party" is funnier than "orgy," for the same reason that "tuna" is funnier than "trout," which is to say, I don't know why.

Daniel: I know the ChiSox were in the West. And they still seemed to play the Brewers and the Indians all the time. But yeah, the Mariners too. In the dome. Gosh, depressing. And thanks for the kind words.

No name given: What I mean by the designated hitter rule, in that context, is the rule that the DH is used in the A.L. park but not the N.L. Since that rule has come in, home teams have fared better in the World Series than one would expect from regular season and league-playoff results in the same period. Kind of makes sense, since the home team is playing by its own league's rules and the visitor is playing under rules for which its roster was not designed.

On the other hand, the sample size is small enough, only about 100 games, and the presence of the anomalously dominant '98-00 Yankees might throw things off enough to make my findings meaningless.