Is it me or are sports seasons and their subsequent play-offs getting longer and longer? They used to call Reggie Jackson “Mister October” because the play-offs and World Series were always around that time. Now they’re stretching into November. It gets cold and it snows during November. Is that really baseball season? Look at the

NBA Finals

. They’re stretching on all throughout June when they used to finish up at the beginning of the month. My father and his friends always used to talk about the “syndicate.” These were the mayors and city councilmen and the sports league officials getting together to extend playoff series by a few extra games to generate more money from everyone watching, people going to the bars, live attendance, merchandise, and all that advertising. It always had to be the referees or umpires not calling the game right down the middle that meant that their teams had lost and not wrapped up that round of the playoffs. I don’t know. Sports are big business and I know a lot of things go on behind the scenes, but I’ve never seen or heard of any real evidence about this sort of thing. It’s all just drunken speculation.