Starting Five

1. “Mowed Down in Motown”… as the New York Post wrote. The Yankees are swept in four straight by the Detroit Tigers, the first time that’s happened in the postseason since 1976. Worse, it was on the 35th anniversary of Reggie Jackson’s epic Game 6 in the 1977 World Series (three at-bats, three pitches total from three different Dodger pitchers, three home runs). Even worse, the only Yankee who hit a homer or triple  after Game One– and the only one to score in Detroit — was Eduardo Nunez, who was not on the roster when the ALCS began last Saturday. As our friend Jeff Bradley of the Newark Star-Ledger wondered aloud on Twitter, “Will any team in MLB history ever have 36 scoreless offensive innings again in a four-game series?” Maybe, but probably not one with at least four future Hall of Famers in the batting order.

2. Aaron Fisher, the courageous Victim One in the Jerry Sandusky trial, emerges from the pseudonym and is interviewed by ABC’s Chris Cuomo (the full interview will run tonight on 20/20). Fisher has published a book. Meanwhile, Armen Keteyian is probably still standing on Mike McQueary’s porch.

3. Webbed Feat: Oregon 43, Arizona State 7, in Sun Devil Stadium, after just 19:33 on national television last night. Having been weaned on college football via attending ASU games in the late 1970s, we can only imagine how Frank Kush would’ve handled the halftime speech. The Ducks stopped paddling and cruised home to a 43-21 win (weird stat: the Ducks had just 48 yards passing on 11 completions). Before the contest, Sun Devil coach Todd Graham told ESPN’s Samantha Steele that their field was known as “The Furnace” (a tradition dating back at least, what, six weeks now?) but speedy Oregon transformed it into a Fun Race.

Instead of surnames, Oregon backs should just have “See Ya” on the backs of their jerseys

4. We know that we should care about the NLCS — Marco Scutaro! — but we’ve just been too busy wallowing in the complete collapse of the Yankees. St. Louis leads 3-1, which means that we are just 27 outs away from reliving the 2006 World Series, which no one from outside of Detroit or St. Louis can recall.

5. Just two nights later, Obama and Romney return to New York City to clog traffic on the East Side speak at a charity dinner. The photo below will be blown up to life-size, framed, and occupy a meaningful space in our entry foyer (if, of course, we had an entry foyer).

And then they all went to see “The Book of Mormon”

Reserves

“Elephant Crushes Australian Zookeeper?” You’re gosh-darned right we’ll click on that.

Sports Illustrated names Paul Fichtenbaum as the managing editor of its sports group, while Chris Stone is named managing editor of the magazine (for as long as it continues to print, we assume). John Huey, for whom Time Inc threw a lavish (reported to cost $300,000) going away party back in the early 2000s in the midst of layoffs, only to not go away, made the announcement in a memo (we still have a cookie embossed with a photo of Huey’s face on it in our freezer if you’d like to come by and see it). “Fichto”, Stone and ESPN mag editor in chief Chad Millman all started out, as did this writer/waiter, as fact-checkers at Sports Illustrated… well, okay, we all started out as zygotes, but we chose to advance the story somewhat.

The best zingers at the Al Smith dinner (if only Jeffery Ross had been allowed to speak) goes to Governor Romney who, noting media bias, said that it would be played as “Obama embraced by Catholics; Romney dines with rich people.”

For the first time in at least two weeks, 1) Alex Rodriguez has the night off, 2) the Yankees are not playing and 3) A-Hole does not need to be out of town for a travel day. We wonder what a certain Australian bikini designer is doing tonight…

“Tell me again about that time the Yanks were trailing by six runs in the 9th inning and you hit a solo home run…”

We have no idea if he’d have even wanted the job, but Jack McCallum would have been a HUGELY popular choice within the masthead to succeed Terry McDonnell as managing editor. And Jack, as well as being immensely well-liked, has as much cache as anyone associated with SI in press boxes across the nation. Only Peter King may have a bigger personal brand.

Jack, even at age 63, would have made a great choice

Give Yankee manager Joe Girardi credit. He gave A-Hole an opportunity to redeem himself, pinch-hitting him for Raul Ibanez with the Yanks trailing 6-1 with two men on in the top of the sixth. An “A-bomb for A-Rod”, as Yankee play-by-play man John Sterling calls it, would have made it a game once again. Instead, A-Hole flied out to end the inning. Girardi gave A-Hole a chance to turn the narrative, but he failed. Again.

49ers 13, Seahawks 6. We miss the “What’s your deal?” era of Carroll and Harbaugh…

JDubs hands out his midseason college football awards…

We know, we know. We are a little too obsessed with this story, but allow us to ask this question: How does TBS’ dugout reporter Craig Sager MISS THIS? We mean, isn’t that his job, to report about things happening on the field of play? He had the biggest scoop of at least his baseball career taking place right in front of him and he was likely too preoccupied looking at swatches of potential Game 2 blazer choices to notice? Imagine if he had attempted to break that story live. Would TBS have even allowed him to do so without 200% confirmation of its veracity? On the other hand, Sager is married to a former Chicago Bull dancer/cheerleader, so it’s not as if he never noticed a pretty face while on the job and acted on it, either.

Jon Stewart interviews POTUS. Although, the night before, this segment reviewing the second debate (“Now Including the President”) was more entertaining (catch the Romney eyebrow lift at 1:33). “Can you say it a little louder, Candy?”

So our pal Rick Reilly has another tough moment, courtesy of Deadspin. Riles was always very well liked, even loved, at SI, but he had a reputation among us fact-checkers as, well, you’d better triple-check every sentence. Combing over the details has never been his long suit, and in the age of fact-checking, that was not a liability. Today, when there are blogs out there just waiting for someone like Riles to stumble, it’s like Cicely Tyson fighting Mike Tyson. Wait, where have we heard that before?

Fantastic New York Times piece on one of the alleged ringleaders of the Benghazi attack, Ahmed Abu Khattala.

We’re going to give Paul Ryan a pass on the Colt McCoy/Brandon Weeden “Great job at Oklahoma State” mix-up. At least he got the school of one of the Browns’ quarterbacks correct, and let’s face it, if both players were black this would have been a HUGE gaffe.

We don’t care how long these four seventh graders in Anderson, Ind., are suspended for accidentally coming across a topless photo of their teacher on a school-issued iPad, they’ll still have smirks on their faces the day that they return.

Tom Hanks: Good F’in Morning, America!

If for no other reason than the title of the segment (“A Shucking Disaster”), you should watch Stephen Colbert’s report on The Corn Palace.

Cornutopia

Syria is, or should be, a much bigger Middle East-in-crisis story than Afghanistan or Iran or even Libya right now, no?

Did you ever wake up, sit straight up in bed and wonder, What’s the tallest building in the southern hemisphere? So have we! So we looked it up Googled it. It’s called Q1. Do you know where it is located? Answer below the photo.

“Oy, that’s HUUUGE.”

Located in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia, on what is known as the Gold Coast.