Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just in time for Halloween, the Chocolate Jesus is back.

By the time you read this, Bostonist will either be elated or will have had its heart broken by the Cleveland Indians during the ALCS. The Red Sox has taken Bostonist on a tummy-turning roller-coaster ride. At one point, they thought Cleveland was messing with its head when the Indians hired Josh Beckett's old girlfriend to sing the National Anthem. In non-Sox-related news, Bostonist found out what an Iron Butt is and mourned the imminent closure of one of the city's finest theaters. And an astronaut is planning on taking a little bit of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with her when she flies.

SFist interviewed New Yorker scribe Alex Ross, saw Archbishop George Niederauer apologize to the Catholic Church for giving communion to the anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and had a time-honored NYC vs. SF debate. SFist also questioned the practice of "tipping" cable car drivers. The eco-y Lights Out SF ended up a dim success. Oh, and therapeutic sound healers? Are interesting. And bizarre. Just listen for yourself.

Poor Cal-- so close yet so far. Our theory about what happened is that the idea of Cal having the #1 ranked team in the country was so crazy that even in this year (decade, actually) of sports craziness, the God of Sports deemed that just too crazy and set the upset in motion. Of course, we're also looking at the Rockies in the World Series, so whadda we know?

Okay, before the Raiders recap, here's a rant...if you've been following the baseball playoffs, especially the American League, it's been nothing but Yankees..Yankees...Yankees. When they lost to the Indians, the story wasn't "Cleveland beats the Yankees" but "Yankees lose to Cleveland." Then you'd watch ESPN and you'd have twenty minutes on the Yankees and at the most a few minutes on the Indians. Hell, if you watched ESPN after the Yankees were eliminated, you'd have difficulty knowing just who they lost too. Next time we turn ESPN on, we're half expecting a story to go "and this just in, the Yankees are still not in the playoffs." And now that it's Cleveland/Boston, it's the same thing all over again. After Game 2, the story wasn't Cleveland winning, it was Boston losing and why, as if the Sox were so destined to win and the fact they didn't was somehow they're doing, not the fact that the Indians are a pretty damn good baseball team. And even when watching the games, you barely know who the Sox are playing because not even the announcers on Fox acknowledge anything other than Boston.

And now...

Chargers 28 Raiders 14- The Raiders, it appears, had the misfortune of playing the Chargers not at the beginning of the season, but halfway through the season when a team many people consider Superbowl contenders finally got out of their stupor and realized that they're Superbowl contenders. Or, at least realized that their bread & butter is basically to do nothing than handoff to LaDanian Tomlinson, a cat who just kills the Raiders and did so to the tune of 198 yards (seriously, everytime we looked up, he was busting some twenty yard run). Something which would obviously be known by the Chargers coach, Marvelous Norv Turner, who used to see LT2 do it to him. As for the Raiders, they didn't play very well at all (Daunte was sacked 6 times) but it's hard to know whether they really are that good or whether they just got caught by one pissed-off Chargers team.

Giants 3 Nationals 2- The Giants won a game in extra innings. We repeat, the Giants won a game in extra innings. Will wonders never cease? In fact, according to our unscientific methods, we see that the Giants are actually 1-60 in extra innings games this season. Okay, we exaggerate but it does seem like the Giants get in their fare share of extra inning games and lose every single one of them. But not only did the Giants win in the 11th, they were down by a run and rallied in the 10th as Randy Winn scored on a Bengie Molina single as B-Money once again came through in the clutch. Winn also won the game with a bases load single in the 11th. Lost in all this extra inning madness (and the Bonds circus) was yet another massively awesome start by Tim Lincecum who held the Nats to one run in seven innings. At one point, the Enchanter had runners on second and third with two outs and Ryan Zimmerman up. As Kruk, Kuip, and booth guest Frank Robinson discussed just how dangerous a situation it was, especially for a rookie, Lincecum struck out Zimmerman, causing SFist to break into tears as we realized the Kid was going to pitching for us for at least four or five more years, or at least until the Yankees sign him when the Giants have to give him up because too much of their budget will be tied up with Zito.

Oakland 9 Rangers 7- And speaking of extra innings, the A's won in the lucky 13th after blowing a seven run lead. Yep, that's right-- a 7-0 lead. This game sounds like a hoot too. The A's scored six runs in the 1st inning all with two outs but then the Rangers inched their way back, run by run, until they finally tied it in the ninth as Michael Young hit a home run off of Alan Embree. The Rangers, btw, did all this while also striking out twenty times. The A's finally won it in the 13th as Mike Piazza and then Mark Ellis singled in runs. The hit that started the rally, by the way, was also the first hit the A's got since the fifth inning- a total of seven innings without getting a hit.

Dodgers 6 Giants 4- Before we begin the fun, we'd like to draw your attention to a pretty interesting article by the LA Times' Bill Plaschke who writes how that two game series in '97, the Brian Johnson series, completely ruined the Dodgers for ten years. Long story short, the series devastated the team that season and knocked them out of the playoffs, making it easier for Fox to buy the Dodgers and promptly trash the franchise. Good stuff. Anyhoo, the Enchanter got Cained (our new verb for when a pitcher pitches a good game only to lose due to the Giants ineptitude) as the bullpen gave up four runs in the eighth to lose the game. The damage was done by Messer’s Kline and Messenger and is it us or does Randy Messenger look like a taller, skinner Turtle from "Entourage." As for Bonds, he did nothing of much importance but we couldn’t help but notice that when he hit what looked like a decent shot at hitting the homer, the fans stood up in excitement only to see it turn into just another fly out. When he was taken out, a huge portion of fans left the stadium and yes, it is fairly typical of Dodgers fans, but it was still a 3-2 game at the time.

And one more thing-- sadly police say that they found traces of cocaine in Rod Beck's house when they investigated his suicide. When we heard about his death, that was unfortunately one of the first things we thought of, that it was somewhat related to drugs even though we really hoped it wasn't. It was.

A's 3 Tigers 2- Yeah, the A's won, but the thing we're more concerned with is that the Yankees are now only two behind the Indians for the wild card spot (and three behind the Tigers). Jesus Frickin' Christ, people, won't that team go down? They're the Jason Voorhees of baseball-- everytime you think they're killed they keep on coming back. With the Giants out and the A's out, there was nothing more we were looking forward to than some serious Yankees schadenfreude and now we can't even get that. So, anyways, go Tribe!

Giants 13 Dbacks 0- Yes, the Kid (the Franchise? The Enchanter?) pitched a shutout as the Giants offense exploded (somewhere, Matt Cain cried himself to sleep) but the big news is that Barry B. rallied in the final days to be voted into one of the starting spots on the NL All Star team. Credit has to be given to the Giants front office who rallied season ticket holders and other fans to his cause and were able to get him the votes needed. Some would say that the whole thing was a bit more ass-kissing on the Giants' part-- after all, they didn't rally the fans to vote for B Money Molina or Lincecum. We like to prefer his being voted in as the Sanjaya vote-- the punk vote. After all, what sort of All Stars news would cause quite the cognitive dissonance than the popular election to baseball's big night by the so-called arch-villain of baseball and poster child of steroids? We're sure there's a lot of media folks out there with steam coming out of their ears trying to figure this one out and we don't even want to think what Bud is thinking about all this. As Nelson would say, "ha ha."

A's 11 Yankees 5- Dan Haren had kind of a weird day yesterday. He didn't pitch very well (gave up five runs) but got the win (his 10th) and got selected to be the A's representative to the All Star Game. Good going Dan. As for the game, it was the return of the Bizarro A's as the pitching wasn't so hot but the offense was. The A's took two out of three from the Yankees, scoring eighteen runs in the past two games.

We've given up our dislike of this whole interleague baseball thing years ago when we realized that things like the Yankees coming to town for a series against the Gints is a pretty cool thing. The same with a set in Fenway also coming this summer. As for the yearly Melee by the Bay, we've sort of acquired a feeling of meh towards the whole thing. It's done every year so there's really not that much of a difference between this series and, say, a Giants/Phillies series or an A's/Indians series.

Well, maybe it’s a bit more exciting than that.

Part of it is because there's no real animosity between fans of the teams or an intense rivalry going on between them. Sure, the front offices probably throw spitballs at each other at league meetings and, sure, Giants fans may think A's fans are non-existent at best and habitués of Antioch at the worst while A's fans think Giants fans are fair weather corporate Yuppies out schmoozing clients at the site of a team that hasn't won anything on this side of the Mississippi River, but it's not that intense. But who cares about us? As the stadiums are packed on both sides of the Bay, the front offices have to pretty happy with these things.

Needless to say, this should be an interesting series because, as we said earlier, both teams are in a way similar and completely dissimilar at the same time. Similar because they both feature excellent starting pitching and rather weak offenses (both teams seem to play one run games everytime they step on the field). Opposite because the A's philosophy is to go with a bunch of young kids and "who the hell is that guy" players while the Giants' philosophy is to go with a bunch of old geezers and "does he still play?" players and throw them on the back of Barry Lamar.

The real question for this series is will anyone actually score any runs. Both teams have their aces going and these look like the kind of games managers call for bunts in the early innings because one run could be enough to win the game. Our prediction? Offense galore just because whenever everyone talks about the pitching, the hitters go nuts. The other thing of interest is that, yes, tonight's game will have Barry Zito facing his old mates for the first time since he switched sides.

For those of you keeping score, here's the rotations for the series

Zito vs. Gaudin
Cain vs Haren
Morris vs. Kennedy

Let the games begin

Roberts has achieved God-head status in New England as the man who started the 'Sox rally during the '04 playoffs against the Yankees and gets a little love from stat-heads for his decent OBP and speed. Whatever. If he's so good, why is it he goes from team to team to team every year? We see him as just a glorified Calvin Murray and we all know how great that worked out. As for Richie, we loved the dude (he was our favorite Giant during the glory years) and he plays a multitude of positions but he doesn't exactly make our heart go pitter-patter in non-nostalgic ways. Loretta is one of those guys who puts up decent numbers and plays a decent game and could be a decent pickup except for the fact he had a crummy season last year. He is also 35.

Lidle was on the team for only two years, in 2001 and 2002 but was a key component of those A's teams. In fact, we remembered him as a pretty good pitcher and could never quite figure out why he got shuffled off from one team to another. During that amazing 20-game win streak the A's had in 2002, Lidle helped out by throwing 32 consecutive scoreless innings.

The A's found out about Lidle's death three hours before the start of the playoff game and those still around expressed their sadness and shock over the incident. Lidle was a popular player who earned the name "Snacks" for his love of, you guessed it, snack food.

Gothamist was all over the story and you can read the real-time posting about the incident and how it played it in the Big Apple here. And you can read quotes and reaction from Eric Chavez and Barry Zito here and tributes from A's fan at A's Nation

This afternoon beneath overcast skies at McAfee Coliseum, the 2006 Oakland Athletics continued to defy expectations by smacking the Minnesota Twins 8-3 in a fashion befitting a potential World Series team. The entire game was a literal composite of the A’s season: solid pitching, timely defense and amazing clutch hitting.

The claim must be made now that Marco Scutaro is one of the best clutch hitters the A's have had in many years. He continues to shock everyone with his uncanny ability to slap doubles to the opposite field at the most critical time. But today's game was about destroying any further reference about their previous lapses in nine playoff clinching games.

Eric Chavez, one of the few remaining links from those October flameouts, was an absolute grown man this afternoon. Sporting a 1 for 30-plus quandary in recent playoff games, mashed a homerun off Twins starter Brad Radke to get the A's rolling early. He was on base all day, stellar in the field and set the pace for others like Bradley and Scutaro to get off. Something also must be said about the A’s pitching-- it is very good! Danny Haren controlled the Twins vaunted lineup for six innings before turning it over to Justin Duchscherer and Huston Street to put the final sleeper hold on them the rest of the way.

A's fans should really relish this moment. They’ve been worn down listening to all the garbage about their team closing. Next you ask? Every self-respecting A's fan wants the Evil Empire to come to town-- The Mighty (and bloated) New York Yankees. Whoever it is, they will have their hands full with the scrappiest team in baseball.

By SFist Kevin, contributing