Playoffs!

Playoffs? Playoffs? You wanna talk about playoffs? Actually, we do. It is time.

This crisp October, the Lords of Baseball are once again working their black magic on the National Pastime -- the absurdly long regular season and playoffs that only start about the time the traditional Fall Classic once ended, not to mention the night games in near-freezing weather to pacify television, and naked greed.

Yet we do have five of Major League Baseball's oldest teams: the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Phillies and Cardinals, and their classic uniforms.

The Twins, of course, are decades old themselves and have appeared in the World Series three times, winning twice. The Angels have been around as long and have won the title once and come close several times. And the Rockies, born in 1993, have appeared in one Series and have built a reputation for dramatic late-season charges.

We have Red Sox Nation, the Empire, the Bums, the Redbirds, the Halos and the Phils; the new Stadium, Fenway, Chavez Ravine, Coors Field, Busch Stadium, the Big A, the Phillie Phanatic, and the last season of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. This should be good.

Above all, we have baseball under intense, win-or-go-home pressure and players who react like Little Leaguers because they know this is what they will be remembered for in the Record Books. The often obnoxious modern world of professional sports we can ignore -- during the playoffs.