Thoughts and prayers to the Dodgers and Braves, as we joyfully await tonight's bloodletting

In all of sports, nothing ruptures the human soul like a full-scale, total eclipse, Cat-5, projectile-vomit, Mentos-in-Coke baseball blowout. 

Certainly, football has its 66-0 snoozers, and it's fun when the lone question in a basketball game is whether one team can reach 120. But those wipeouts are limited by a clock, and with each ticktock, the end comes closer. Baseball has no timer, and when your team is getting emulsified, there is no guarantee that it will ever end. You might have stepped into a cosmic wormhole, and you'll be here forever. Baseball blowouts are existential crises, especially in October.

On that note, to any straggling fans of the Atlanta Braves - (God, I can't imagine the horrifying circumstances that brings you here) - I offer the rudimentary T & P, (that's "thoughts & prayers," as the human oil cans say.) Yesterday evening, I turned on the Braves game in what I figured would be the third inning. It was still the first. The fans were booing, the announcers were stuttering, and all hope had been sucked from Your Name Here Stadium like milk from a turd. 

So much for that World Series reunion of lost Yanks - Brian McCann (this morning, retired), Francisco Cervelli (the ghost of Scranton), Shane Greene (who brought us Didi), Mark Melancon (who brought us Lance Berkman) and even Adeiny Hechavarria, whose time in pinstripes may have been a fever dream... gone, vanished, disappeared, with barely a memory worth remembering.

Also, so long to the mighty Dodgers, winners of 106 regular season games, and would-be owners of the home field advantage. Sorry, LA, but that long run of division titles may be over, with nothing to show for it. (That's what you get for firing Mattingly.) Think of all those B-list celebrities, all the stars of "the current hit that everyone is talking about," who shall be denied their moment in the luxury box. So sad. To the people of California, my hope is that Pacific Gas & Electric cut your power in time to spare you from last night's meltdown. From now on, you've got Friday night pro wrestling. Cheer up. No scripted story line can be as painful as what you've already endured. 

Meanwhile, this is wonderful! Tonight, one of our Yankee nemeses - Houston or Tampa - will disappear, and one thing is certain: From the losing dugout, they'll be gushing tears like Freddie Patek. We will watch the end of 2019, which until now had been a joyful confluence of victories. Up in flames.

Tonight, we get to sit in the blood splatter section of the steel cage death match, while the Rays and Astros trade gouges. Each pitch in on the hands, each dive for a liner, each inning added to a pitcher's barking elbow... it's an ice cream sandwich, and we will be Jesus Montero. I hope it lasts well into the morning. For the Yankees, it's a cosmic freebie: Barring an alien intervention, nothing bad can happen. 

That it will take place simultaneously with a Giants-Patriots blowout - in Boston, no less - is a sign of well planned juju logistics. I have always believed, even when facts didn't support it, that the Yankees and Giants are psychically linked. The universe offers each fan a baseline level of joy, and in this case, when the Giants win, the Yankees must lose. And verse visa. We should accept this. Thus, tonight, the ridiculously inept Giants will be cat-tortured for four hours by Belichick's grease thugs. But you know what? It won't rattle me. No matter what happens, no matter how bad they beat on us, our friend Mr. Clock will be ticking, and after an hour, we shall be released. But on some other channel, for either Tampa or Houston, the Hell will never end. Howl, howl, howl.