The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. More importantly, I found out that Jim Thome autographs the Halloween candy he hands out.

That’s a Jim Thome signed Kit Kat, shared with Dugout co-founder Jon Bois by @bretwallin, and it’s right behind “that time he dressed as Paul Bunyan” on the list of things Jim Thome has done in real life to pull him closest to our fictional depiction of him here. The only way it could get better is if he accidentally kills something by petting it too hard.

Halloween was two days ago, sure, but this is the reason it should happen every day. Today’s Dugout follows.

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In case you missed “Conan” on TBS last week, and judging by the ratings you probably did, Conan O’Brien caused a minor stir after he Tweeted the following message to his fellow Boston Red Sox fans:

“Remember, Red Sox fans, they still have to live in Tampa.”

And because we’ve already seen that no sports fans in Tampa can take a simple, harmless joke, local shock jock Mike “Cowhead” Calta once again rallied his legions of mouth-breathing, stay-at-home Nickelback fans and demanded that O’Brien issue an official apology on his TV show.

WHPT-FM afternoon drive host Mike “Cowhead” Calta got his fans involved too.

An explicit hashtag resulted — #F–kCoco — along with a campaign to harass, (I mean, remind) the TBS star into taking back his insult.

Calta posted tweets with the number for O’Brien’s offices and the personal cellphone of the show’s publicist, Drew Shane.

(Via TampaBay.com)

Surprisingly, O’Brien caved to Cowhead’s demands and issued a full apology on last Thursday’s show.

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Today at With Leather and across the sports-o-sphere has been a celebration of the “greatest night in baseball history”. If you aren’t up to speed, you can check out some of the amazing statistics or take a look at the emotional faces of men who both played in and watched the games.

The Tampa Bay Rays are going to the playoffs, and that works out well for The Dugout — that be-goggled gentleman in the photo is Kyle Farnsworth, relief pitcher and folk hero of the Official Chatroom For Major League Baseball. He pitched nearly a full inning against New York’s Scott Proctor, and if you’re a Dugout historian (and I know you are) you’ll know important that is to our epic, long-term storytelling.

Regardless, please enjoy today’s Dugout, which is technically the first in our semi-annual, semi-daily recapping of the MLB playoffs. (And drop us a comment, would you?)

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"You think Evan Longoria was impressive? Wait til you see Kobe play in Italy!"

After what many are calling the greatest single night in the history of baseball, you can only imagine how it must feel to be David Stern, AKA the captain of the NBA’s Titanic. Stern, as I like to imagine, was probably sitting in his castle atop Snake Mountain, stroking Panthor, as he watched the Tampa Bay Rays and St. Louis Cardinals secure their playoff destinies in incredible fashion while wondering, “What can I do to steal the spotlight from these pathetic fools?”

And then he cackled with delight as he summoned ESPN’s Marc Stein through his evil crystal ball…

David Stern is planning to threaten players with the cancelation of the entire 2011-12 season if the sides haven’t made major progress toward a deal by the end of the weekend, according to sources close to the talks.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That’s exactly how we’ll defeat those do-gooder baseball scoundrels! We’ll completely cancel our season next week and destroy all of the momentum that the recent NBA Finals had with incredible ratings and excited new fans. No wait, that’s silly. That’s not going to do anything good, so Stern and his minions should just deny it. What’s that? Oh, they already have.

Well played, Stern. I already forgot about… what the hell were we talking about? Oh well, whatever. Let’s have another good negotiation, owners and players! PRO-GRESS! PRO-GRESS!

Last night was one of the greatest nights in the history of the American League, and maybe baseball itself. Evan Longoria was hitting a walk-off homer to push the Tampa Bay Rays into the playoffs … and at almost the exact same moment, Robert Andino of the Baltimore Orioles was singling to left to pull the Boston Red Sox out.

One of the reasons baseball and the moments that make it great are so engaging is that there’s a stat for literally everything; if you look hard enough, you could probably find a website listing caught-stealing ratios explaining how the amount of drug vials in Tim Raines’ pockets effected his baserunning.

What you see on the left is a pair of amazing charts from Sports Club Stats — the one at the top is titled “Tampa Bay Rays Chance Will Make Playoffs”. The one on the bottom, “Boston Red Sox Chance Will Make Playoffs”. They become even more fun when you play with the interactive versions, which allow you to hover over each little circle and find out what was going on and why it’s so high or low on the chart. Compare and contrast them for yourself:

Boston Red Sox Chance Will Make Playoffs
Tampa Bay Rays Chance Will Make Playoffs

Wonderful. I’m guessing Baltimore’s has been a straight line tracing the bottom since 1997.

[h/t Matt Ufford]

Always relevant.

Since we last spoke of America’s pastime – I believe it was all the way back on Monday – not much has changed in the playoff picture. While the New York Mets have proven that anything is possible, the divisional races are basically all settled, but the Wild Card races in both divisions are as warm as the side of the pillow that you just flipped over. I was never meant to be on SportsCenter.

The Boston Red Sox currently lead the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Angels by 2 and 3.5 games, respectively, while the Atlanta Braves have a 2.5 game lead on the St. Louis Cardinals and a 4.5 lead on the San Francisco Giants. After tonight’s game against the Florida Marlins, the Braves have a series against the Washington Nationals, before they close out the regular season with three games against the Philadelphia Phillies, who would undoubtedly love to knock the Braves out of the playoffs.

Making things even more difficult for Atlanta, the Cardinals play the Astros and Cubs (the Giants have it tough as well with the Rockies and Diamondbacks) so the NL race will be butthole tight the rest of the way. And if that doesn’t sound like a daunting enough task for the Braves, Major League Baseball is throwing superstition into play by launching the Braves’ “Legends are Born in October” commercial tonight. Ouch.

A whole season doomed by Lady Luck after the jump.

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