I must not have been listening when Buck made that little neighborhood speech. My guess -- and it's only a guess, especially since I still haven't heard it, though I'll look for it later -- is that he avoided mentioning blacks out of reflex, or instinct.

Live TV is a dangerous place. You say something off the cuff and it stays said forever. People who get in trouble for the things they say on live TV are very often white guys saying things about African-Americans. I can understand a white guy putting a "do not go there" filter on all off-the-cuff discussion of African-Americans.

I don't know if Buck has that filter, somehow doesn't know that the South Side has a lot of black folks living there, was reading someone else's copy or just didn't get around to African-Americans before the subject changed. Or something else.

Similar topic, but slightlyl off: A long time ago, like in the mid-'70s I heard Vin Scully address this on a local Dodgers telecast. Shot of two relievers in a pen, one white, one black. Don't remember who they were but he said, "There's Smith and Jones warming up. Smith closer to the foul line." Then there was a little pause and he said, "Now, why do we do that?" I remember that quote distinctly. Then he said, paraphrasing from memory, "Here's Smith, who's white, and Jones, who's obviously a black man, and I'm going out of my way not to say that."

It was a great point, a great question. And to this day I've never heard anyone, including Scully, identify a player by color in that situation, even though in real life almost everyone would say either "Smith is the white guy" or "Jones is the black guy."

Definitely a great letter. I'm trying to find out if Salon has a way yet (I know one is planned) to highlight great letters.

Meanwhile, everyone meandering by here should go to the second to the last page of this thread and read the letter headlined "At last."

Did McCarver really say that? Anyone? That would be insane.

So, how do you measure? There's no perfect way, of course.

One way might be how dominant a team was viz. the rest of the league. In this year's American League, a bunch of teams were pretty bunched up, with the White Sox winning 99, the Red Sox, Yanks and Angels 95 and the Indians 93. The difference between 93 and 95 is a bad hop here and there. The difference between 95 and 99 isn't much more, if there is a difference.

It's certainly a very different thing than, say, the '98 Yankees, who won 114 games while nobody else won more than 92, or the '27 Yankees, who won 110 while nobody else won more than 91. That's kicking butt. The White Sox didn't kick butt.

You could use run differential. Did a team just abuse people? Run differential (runs scored minus allowed) is a pretty good predictor of wins. Runs scored and allowed can be put into a formula to determine a team's Pythagorean winning percentage, or Pyth. record, which is, arguably, a better measure of how good they are than their actual won-loss percentage, which is affected by luck. (And which is always very similar anyway.) I've never really decided if I agree with this theory. Anyway, according to Pythagorean winning percentage, the best team in the American League this year was ... Cleveland.

I don't think a team has to win the next year to somehow "prove" they were a great team. That's a different topic, dynasties or sustained success or whatever. But the 2005 White Sox were exactly as good as they were, as were all other 2005 teams. The season's over. The book's closed. The '06 Sox going in the tank, or winning 120 games, wouldn't change how good the '05 Sox were.

But anyway, I don't think there's any reasonable way to argue the White Sox were the best team of any era, and you might have to do some fancy arguing to argue they were the best team of this era, however you want to decide era other than "2005." They were a very good team that got hot in the postseason. A worthy champion. But I don't think they were among the elite teams of the last quarter century or so.

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

If you're viewing "Only Editors' Choices," the starred letters, there may be newer letters that would have been marked with a star had they come in earlier. You can click "All letters" to see.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

"The White Sox have been playing a relentless brand of baseball in the postseason," McCarver said. "It's been so good that a lot of people feel that they could beat any team from any era."

Who are these people? No idea. And anyway: Duh!

This is baseball. Any team, no matter how lousy, can beat any team from any era. The Red Sox lost 103 games (out of only 154) in 1927, and they beat the mighty 1927 Yankees four times. The 1975 Reds only went 11-7 against the Padres, who lost 91 games that year.

Re-reading what he said, I think he's saying that the way the White Sox were playing in the postseason, they could have beaten anyone from any era in a postseason series.

Well, double-duh. So could any team that plays well in the postseason. The postseason's a crapshoot. Any team that plays well for a couple of weeks could beat any other team, ever, in the postseason.

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

If you're viewing "Only Editors' Choices," the starred letters, there may be newer letters that would have been marked with a star had they come in earlier. You can click "All letters" to see.