Well, that was sort of a waste of time, huh?

After one of the most exciting moments of this, or any other postseason for that matter, we are left with anticlimax. Houston led the whole way. Mark Mulder crumbled in that way that only he can do.

The only news was that Fox found out that Houston is in Texas. Wow! How hard are they going to be shoveling this "T for Texas" horse hockey down our throats? And speaking of shovelingd, what was that little speech-cum-surrealistic montage that Thom Brennamen launched into at the end of the game about Roger Clemens' dying mother accurately predicting the score of his next game and then saying "Shoeless Joe", of course, meaning that the Astros would face off against the White Sox in the World Series. What is he smoking? I want to part with you cowboy—you and me together? Forget it.

Somehow this Texas Nostradamus even knew that her son, leading 10-1 at the time, would somehow give up an unearned run due to an error to match he prediction. It reminded of the episode of the Odd Couple where Oscar cringes as Felix corrupts his radio show into some maudlin melodrama loosely based on the Ruth homer for a sick kid story. Except no one at Fox has any shame—the audience had to cringe a la Oscar.

Anyway, the Astros now head into the World Series with two men who have accumulated at least two thousand career games prior to playing in a championship round. I wondered how rare that was. So I looked it up.

Here are the players who appeared in the most regular-season games prior to reaching the World Series. Biggio edges out Barry Bonds, the previous "leader", by at least 100 games. Bagwell has had the fourth worst wait:

It's nice to round out the list with Ozzie Gullen and Larry Walker.

OK, that's by games, but how about years? There are actually four players, three of whom were pitchers, who waited longer than Biggio though they played fewer games:

So now we that we have a two-day layoff, I hope Fox cracks open their atlas and looks up what state Chicago is in. I'm just thankful that this will (hopefully) be the last we hear from Brennamen and Lyons until next October.