IT’S A MADD MADD WORLD. . .

The best thing about the Dodgers beating the Cardinals, a team with 16 more losses than they had, in the NL wild card game was not setting up the series with the Giants that everyone (outside of St. Louis) wanted. Rather it was quieting down the rabble crying out for the wild card games to become two-out-of-three series. The temptation for MLB is surely there – more TV loot – but as proved once again this year, there is nothing more exciting than sudden death baseball. Max Scherzer said it best when asked if the Dodgers were upset being a wild card after winning 106 games: “No. You have to win your division. We didn’t win our division. There’s no crying in baseball.”…Baseball lost its oldest living former player when Eddie Robinson passed away last Monday at age 100. Eddie, who was a friend, was indeed a baseball treasure who, besides hitting .268 with

172 homers as a first baseman for seven major league teams including the 1948 world champion Indians and 1955 American League champion Yankees, was a general manager for the Braves and Rangers and worked tirelessly to improve the pension benefits for retired players who played before 1945. Right to the end, he was actively engaged in baseball. In a phone call from his home in Fort Worth a couple of months ago, he told me he was trying to organize the left-handed hitters to protest against the shift…Truth be told, up until about a month ago, I had no idea what an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) was, and I still don’t quite understand why people are paying thousands, even millions of dollars to collect them. But it got my attention when Wade Boggs announced last week he was partnering with an NFT company, Firma Pro, to develop unique sports memorabilia NFTs. For the uninitiated, NFTs are digital photos or artwork that are downloaded and stored in people’s personal collections. For starters, Firma Pro is working on an NFT of Boggs’ five batting titles. “I’ve been watching the NFT market,” Boggs said, “and I’m excited to now be a part of it.”