sirmarcos (http://letters.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2005/10/21/friday/permalink/10193dd51599d967856386fe6bc1a838.html): LCS predictions: Astros over Cardinals, Angels over Red Sox. World Series prediction: Astros over Angel. Pretty sharp in the NL, but not doing so well in the AL.

Fair enough, but those were my predictions at the start of the playoffs. Looking at my individual predictions at the beginning of each series, I've been right five out of six times (Angels over Yanks, Cardinals over Padres, Astros over Braves, Astros over Cardinals, White Sox over Angels, wrong only on Red Sox over White Sox). I know, big deal, but still.

I'll figure out soon how all the experts I tracked at the start of the year did with their preseason predictions. Without even looking I can tell you I'm way out of the running in that one.

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po822000 (http://letters.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2005/10/21/friday/permalink/018bbade8fec4b480551ee6587a1b391.html): Why is it that every week you pick against the Colts, sure they're undefeated and that's unlikely to continue all season, but against the Texans.

Every time I've picked against them this year, it's been my What the Heck(tm) Pick of the week. That is, one game per week, I "pick" a team that I think is actually going to lose. Why? What the heck! Since there are WTH rules -- the team I pick has to have a losing record and their opponent has to have a winning record -- my choices are somewhat limited each week, the WTH opponents tend to repeat despite my effort to mix it up as much as possible.

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Ryan (http://letters.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2005/10/21/friday/permalink/3e8b61901ea15288183dfc8495b0ff83.html): Re Bagwell as DH, of course it's logical for the Astros to use him, as they did in the first two games. But you seem to be thinking of Bagwell as "Jeff Bagwell," which he isn't anymore, if that makes sense.

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hatchsin (http://letters.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2005/10/21/friday/permalink/2bfb47d6b2ca26d4a9cecfe3df69e9f7.html): Many baseball fan, like King Kaufman, mistakenly believe that White Sox fans are jealous of the "mystique" surrounding teams such as the Cubs or Red Sox.

First of all, I never wrote anything about White Sox fans being jealous of Cubs or Red Sox fans. In fact, it never would have occurred to me to think White Sox fans were jealous of Cubs fans until a few sentences later in your letter, when you wrote this:

We are more than anything NOT CUBS FANS or anything like them.

Maybe you're not jealous, but why are you defining yourself by the Cubs? I'm a Giants fan, but I'm not "more than anything NOT" a fan of some other team.

Earlier in this thread (I won't paste in the URL, as I've now learned that doesn't work so well), there was a letter headlined "67 words" that was, I thought, unnecessarily abusive and scatological. So I checked it as "spam," which means it doesn't show up on the site, and checked a couple of letters that came in in response to also not publish.

It wasn't the negative view of my work that had bothered me, it was the abusive tone and language ("screw you, eat a dick, go fuck yourself ..."). That hadn't really bothered me either, actually, but I'd thought it was inappropriate.

Thinking about it over the weekend, though, I decided that I had been too restrictive, that un-publishing the letters was too much like censoring opinions. So I've restored the original letter and the response to it, though they aren't "editor's choices."

If there are strong feelings that my original response was proper, I'll reconsider my view on this matter in the future, but for the moment, I'll disalow true spam, but not mere trolls.

On my TV (I am in St. Louis, watching on DirecTV), Fox cut short an "I live for this" promo and returned to the game with the pitch on its way to the plate. I saw Ensberg's swing and the flight of the ball.

As I understand it from my conversations with TV people about this issue in the past, some local stations put their own promos or ads in and return to the broadcast late. Since we're talking about, what, two seconds difference here, that doesn't seem to be the case here.

If the broadcast didn't come back for you until the ball was in the stands, what was on right before that? Was it the "I live for this" promo with the White Sox fan? And if so, did it go all the way through to the end of the promo?

he knew with what I assume would be a professional certainty that the result of any such conference would result in "Well, I can't be certain but it looked like...." and "My best guess is...."

Max, how do you define professional certainty? Because at the next opportunity the umpire asked Everett, "Did you tag him?" That sounds to me like professionally having no idea if you're right or not.

Why not ask? The question is, "I made call XYZ. Did you see it different? And are you positive?" If not, the call stands. I'm not saying that every call should be subject to a committee meeting, but again, the Everett case, the ump KNEW that he didn't know whether Everett had tagged the runner. Why not go to the 1B or RF umpire and say, "I called him out, but I was screened. If you're absolutely sure he missed the tag, let's reverse the call." There's no reason not to. If the other ump didn't have a clear view to the contrary, the call stands. If it's, "Well, I'm pretty sure he missed him," the call stands.

On the foul ball, the home plate ump routinely asks the off-hand baseline ump for help on a check swing. Why not on a play like that?