As promised, the whos and whys of my vote are coming soon (advance warning: right now, I've written three single-spaced pages in Word on the subject), but for now I'd like to enthusiastically second Dan's suggestion that everybody take his "no gloat" election pledge. The entire notion of gloating because your candidate wins seems asinine to me, since the "winners" won't really have personally "won" anything – it's not like we're playing tiddlywinks where one person personally wins and the other is defeated. From the other point of view, many "losers" will be feeling sorry not for their own personal loss, but rather because they believe that we – the losers and winners both – are all losers for having made a poor choice.

There are also plenty of intelligent, well-reasoning folks supporting each of the candidates. Michael Totten – one of my favorite bloggers – wrote up the Hawkish case for John Kerry as well as the liberal case for George Bush before making his decision about who to vote for. If either Bush or Kerry were really the pure evil that some on each side claim them to be, there wouldn't be so much to struggle with or such a divide. In either case, there is reason for optimism and there is reason for pessimism. In either case, any candidate that is elected – and by extension anyone voting for that candidate – could be right or wrong. Because of this, I pledge not to gloat following the election should "my candidate" win.

I've never been a big fan of Halloween. The whole costume thing never really clicked with me. When I was a kid, I'd usually wait until the last minute to come up with (or have mom come up with) an idea of what I should be (Judge Wapner and DirecTV being two of the more notable last-minute entries). While I haven't changed stripes, I'll probably be going to a Halloween party this weekend and the costume part is not optional. So since I'm so terribly bad at costuming myself, I'm taking suggestions for what I should be. The basic requirements are that it be relatively easy to put together and somewhat inexpensive. Bear in mind that I only have a couple days to put it all together. So... what should I be?

Greetings, from Montgomery College, in scenic Germantown, Maryland! I'm here in from the College's library at the moment as it is the only place I have found with publicly available Internet access. I was supposed to have cable modem service installed yesterday, but the Comcast guy messed up and came to my apartment at the wrong time. Grrrr!

Presumably things will be setup tomorrow or Friday, at which point I'll be on a more regular blogging schedule. Although I've chosen to abandon political/news blogging for various reasons, I'll be temporarily dipping my toe back into those waters, starting off with a bang as I weigh in with some thoughts on the election, who I'm voting for and why.

In the meantime, go take the Al Gore vs. The Unabomber test. I only managed a 50%. Props to Pejman (58%) for the pointer.

Watching the LCSes this past week, I couldn't help but be amazed by the contributions of ex-Pirates pitchers. Bronson Arroyo, Tim Wakefield, Jon Leiber, and Jeff Suppan all performed well in important roles for their respective teams. Now make no mistake, these guys wouldn't have made the difference in the Pirates' season, but it's still funny to think that so many of our castoffs can play such an important role on championship-caliber teams.

This also reminded me about a conversation I had a few weeks ago about the players who have enjoyed the greatest athletic succes after leaving a Pittsburgh sports team. Since I myself will be leaving town this week, it seems a doubly appropriate time to take stock of who's done well after they left. Note that athletes who spent negligible time with a professional Pittsburgh team such as Johnny Unitas, Burleigh Grimes, Willie Randolph and Moises Alou aren't being taken into consideration. Here's the list I came up with...

10. Leon Searcy - He was good during his four seasons with the Steelers. Then he left via free agency and was good during his four seasons with Jacksonville, culminating in a Pro Bowl appearance in 1999.

9. Jack Chesboro - Perhaps as an omen of things to come, Happy Jack jumped town before the 1903 season to play for the Yankees. His next five seasons ranged from average to excellent, with his career year coming in 1904. Among his most similar players are a couple of my favorite underrated pitchers of the teens and twenties: Carl Mays and Urban Shocker.

8. Chad Brown - Four good years in the Steelers' linebacking corps before he moved on to the Seahawks via free agency. In Seattle, he amassed at least 93 tackles each of his first five seasons, while also helping the pass rush with 5.5 to 8.5 sacks a year. A two-time pro bowler in his post-Steeler career.

7. Markus Naslund - Started his career with the Penguins by scoring a total of 67 points in his first three seasons. Traded for Alex Stojanov in March of 1996, Markus has posted at least 65 points in his last six seasons, including his Lester B. Pearson award for being the league's most outstanding player, as voted by his peers.

6. Jason Schmidt - John Smiley begat Denny Neagle, who begat Jason Schmidt, who begat Ryan Vogelsong. Not a bad lineage if Vogelsong can live up to it... Even if Dave Littlefield wouldn't have moved him along to the Giants, Schmidt struck me as the kind of guy who wasn't going to succeed in Pittsburgh. Actually, I'm not quite sure he really wanted to be here... He never quite lived up to his talent and he was a difficult guy to get to sign a contract. Since he's left town, he's had two good seasons and two dynamite ones. I don't think that would have happened here.

5. Tim Wakefield - He's this high on the list? Ahead of Hall-of-Famers and all-stars? I knew he had a pretty good run with the Red Sox, but until I looked at the numbers, I didn't realize how good it was. In his best seasons (1995 and 2002), he was comprable to Jason Schmidt in his two best Giants seasons. In between, Wakefield was remarkably consistent, with ERAs ranging from average to good. Only once in his ten years in Boston has Wakefield been below average; even then not by much. He's no Hall-of-Famer and he's never been to an All-Star Game, but ten seasons of above average pitching in every role imaginable makes him a prime candidate for the Hall of Very Good.

4. Kiki Cuyler - Another trip into the wayback machine, Cuyler starred in the Pirates outfield in the 1920's, twice placing in the top ten in MVP balloting. In 1927, Cuyler was dealt to the Cubs for Sparky Adams and Pete Scott. Adams and Scott amounted to nothing, while Cuyler continued his stellar play, posting substantially above average OPSes for the next seven years. Like Cuyler himself, his five most similar players are all in the Hall of Fame.

3. Rod Woodson - Woodson was let go by the Steelers after the '96 season; the accepted wisdom was that he was washed up. Oops. In his nine seasons with the Steelers (not counting the 1995 campaign, which he basically missed), Woodson had 38 interceptions. In the seven full seasons since, he's intercepted 33 passes, equalled or bettered his career high in tackles twice and made four pro bowl squads. Not bad for a washed up old defensive back.

2. Mark Recchi - The "Wreckin' Ball" (or is it "Recchin' Ball?") was a fan favorite on the 1991 Stanley Cup winning Penguins team. The next season, he was dealt to the Flyers in exchange for Rick Tocchet, Kjell Samuelsson and Ken Wreggett. Over the next 12 seasons, Recchi became established as a consistent threat, often racking up significant point totals. This consistency led to his current position among the NHL's all-time top 50 in goals scored and points.

1. Barry Bonds - Duh. It was a colossal mistake to choose to re-sign Andy Van Slyke instead of Bonds. All Barry has done since then is make the Pirates look silly.

A few colorful details about my apartment search to illustrate how surreal the whole experience was...

• I posted apartment wanted ads on craigslist three times. Three times, I had people respond to more than one post where subsequent responses offered the room for a lower monthly rent than previous responses
• The third of my craigslist posts also elicited a reply from a girl not offering me an apartment, but asking me out! I haven't gotten in touch with her yet, both because I haven't had time and because... well... it's sketchy... Do I even want to? Not really... unless of course my readers want me to and will keep coming back to OMB for updates... (geez... will I do anything for my readers or what??)
• The residents of one of a Georgetown townhouse that I was supposed to see the day after I took my apartment were evicted that day because the building didn't meet local codes. This became an issue when another Georgetown townhouse caught fire, killing a student.
• All told, I looked at at least 22 apartments before I actually got one. The breakdown by area: Arlington (6), Bethesda (5), Alexandria (3), Friendship Heights (2), Silver Spring (2), Falls Church (2), Woodley Park (1), Gaithersburg (1). The Arlington breaks down farther into 6 seperate parts of the city (Rosslyn, Ballston, Courthouse, Shirlington, Crystal City and one other area I'm not sure how to identify...)

So just when I thought my apartment search was over, it took a funny new twist: I was told that I couldn't actually move into the apartment after all. Yeah, I'd put down my deposit and dropped off some stuff, but the person whose room I was taking wasn't moving out anymore and I was screwed. It turned out to be just another cautionary tale in my apartment search... a search that is now over... again... I think...

Actually, even after I'd put down the deposit on the Bethesda apartment, I had an uneasy feeling about whether or not everything would actually work out. Only when I woke up in my new apartment would I feel a little more secure about my address. As it turned out, I never actually woke up there or had that feeling of security.

However, I have awakened in my new apartment - twice, in fact - but the first morning that I did, I was overwhelmed by a strong feeling of buyer's remorse. You see, my apartment is in Gaithersburg... Look at that map... You can't even see the Beltway! I'm waaaaay out in suburbia! What's more, I'm in a condo subdevelopment in suburbia. We're so far out that I can't even get DSL service!! Yikes!

The silver lining here is that my lease is only for six months. So that's what I keep telling myself... It's only six months... Nevertheless, on my first morning the first thing I did was to head over to the Target in a local mini-mall type place... how suburban of me! And I completely loathed the whole experience.

After having lived in the city for the last 9 years and in houses for the bulk of the last 5, to live in a suburban condo development is a bit shocking and unfortunate... It's only six months...

So why did I choose the apartment that I did? Are there any positives? Well looking at my five factors, the condo gets at least 3 positives: the place itself is in pretty good shape, the rent is relatively cheap, and my roommate seemed cooler than the bulk of the people I'd met with. I've already pointed out the only major negative: the G-word. Oh, and remember... It's only six months...

Until I get a job, I don't have to worry about the awful commute and I probably won't go out quite as much, so I can try and pretend the location isn't that bad. Oh, and I do have my own bathroom which is also quite nice... and a friend of a friend lives in the next building over... and that's cool. But somehow, I can't help but feel disappointed to be living in a city that is to Washington what Murraysville is to Pittsburgh and what Auburn is to Syracuse. So if you see me walking by and the tears are in my eyes, remind me: It's only six months...

One of the absolute best things on the Internet is Baseball-reference.com. You haven't spent days upon days trolling through it? Why not?!? It's amazing.

The 2004 stats have now been entered as of today, and you can now go look up a lot more fun information. Perhaps most fun are the similarity scores... some newfound goodness:

• Oliver Perez's third most similar player through age 22 is Sandy Koufax. (note that all age-specific similarities here are through the 2004 season)
  
• Kris Benson's second most similar player through age 29: Jon Lieber. Meanwhile, his career totals are most similar to those of Kip Wells.
  
• Also, be sure to check out the updated leaderboards. This one in particular amuses me greatly.
  

Actually, there's way more great stuff there than I can possibly hope to list here... I'll definitely write more about the site later, but for now, check out the new stuff...

New York vs. Boston
Here we go again... and quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing about the Yankees and the Red Sox. While they may see themselves as different, they're really two sides of the same coin: Both spend a ton of money on player salaries and they both have good management teams. This second point cannot be overemphasized. Plenty of losing teams have had a huge payroll (Mets, Orioles, Dodgers) and good roster management and utilization have helped teams win with lower payrolls (Twins, A's, Marlins). But when you level the playing field as far as roster management strategies go, payroll becomes an increasingly large factor in success. With the Yanks and Sox having both factors working in their factor, I fear we might be seeing more of these ALCS matchups in the years to come.

OK, rant over. Who's going to win? I don't know... The Sox always lose, so it's hard to pick them... But then again, you have to figure they'll take a series sooner or later. Besides, the Sox have a one game edge over the Yankees in their meetings over the last two years. Everything seems to be setup for the Sox this year: the Yankees pitching looks vulnerable, the Sox' rotation is setup, and Boston seems to have the edge in the field and potentially in the lineup.

But the Yankees always win. Mike Mussina and Kevin Brown shutting 'em down? Not out of the question... Both have excellent track records and respectable postseason ERAs. Pedro imploding? Hey, you never know... After all, the Yankees are his daddy. Pedro "would probably like to face any other team right now."

Curt Schilling is the best pitcher in the series. I expect to see him in games 1, 4 and 7. How he responds pitching twice on three days' rest could be the key to the series, if Aura and Mystique don't steal the show again. Oh, and if Pedro starts game 2, I'd expect to see him get full rest and not come back until game 6, unless the Sox are down 3-1 heading to game 5. If that's the case, both of his starts will be at Yankee Stadium.

So the rational, baseball analysis side of me wants to take the Sox. But the curse and the background story has become arguably bigger than anything else. Many Red Sox fans would rather beat the Yankees and lose the World Series than beat the Twins and win the Series. It's 1980 and we're in Lake Placid. The evil empire must be defeated and this epic clash overshadows the championship matchup. Only to a substantial part of the baseball world, no matter who wins, it's an evil empire representing the AL in the World Series.
Yankees in 7.

Cardinals vs. Astros
This should be fun. Like the ALCS, both teams bring formidable offenses to the table. The Astros got the "never won a postseason series" monkey off their back with the big win over the Braves last night, meaning the pressure is off the Astros are squarely on the back of the favored Cardinals.

Houston's big problem coming into the series is that the pitching staff is in disarray. Clemens and Oswalt worked the last two games of the Division Series, and neither will be ready for game 1. In fact, if Clemens starts game 2, he'll be on short rest again, and he admitted to hitting the wall in the fifth of his last start on short rest. If he hits the wall against the Cards, it could be tee time for the St. Louis hitters. Beyond that, the Houston bullpen hasn't been great so far in the postseason. Now the Cards staff is a real mixed bag. Guys with mixed track records and whatnot. But at least they'll be fresher.

All along I thought that the Astros would have a hard time getting past St. Louis if their pitching wasn't setup to take maximum advantage of Clemens and Oswalt. Turns out that it isn't. Houston was the only NL team to win their season series with St. Louis, but I don't think that'll stick here.
Cardinals in 6.

Again, I refer you to Aaron Gleeman's playoff series previews, which are much more in-depth than my cursory analysis...

With the Dodgers needing a win to keep their season alive last night, Jose Lima stepped up and threw an improbable complete game shutout against the heavy-hitting Cardinals. In my abbreviated playoff preview, I didn't exactly give Lima a vote of confidence, but he certainly came through big time when the Dodgers needed him.

Along with his success on the field, Lima has also established himself as a fairly good singer, having performed the national anthem and God Bless America at a Dodgers game back in May. Overshadowing the singing, his wife notably joined him for the performance.

During his outing last night, I suspect the announcers mentioned Lima's singing career or perhaps his band, as OMB has had several hits for people searching for variations on "Jose Lima band", for which we rank 5th out of 17,700 on the Google search.

Because I don't like to disappoint my readers, I've done a quick scouring of the Internet for information about Lima's musical career. Here's what I've got: Lima is the lead singer of a band called Banda Mambo and was created in 1995. They have put out four CDs, the latest of which is titled "La Cacata", with plans for a fifth in the works. I didn't find a website for the band, and they aren't listed on Allmusic.com or on Pollstar. Generally, they tour in the US and Dominican Republic.

Lima's antics on the mound, mixed success in his baseball career and off-the-field activities make him seem like the colorful character we'll be talking about many years down the road. Personally, I'll remember him for his contributions to my championship rotisserie baseball team back in 1999. Along with Lima, I was a beneficiary of career years from Kevin Millwood, Mike Hampton, Fernando Tatis, and Chipper Jones. Also helping me out were Brian Giles, who had his first great year, Matt Williams had his last great year, and Luis Castillo and Eric Young had very good years with the stolen base and Trevor Hoffman and Armando Benitez were fantastic out of the bullpen. Actually, about the only player on my team who had a bad performance with respect the rest of his career was... Barry Bonds, for whom 1999 has been the worst year of his career since 1989... But it was the random career years like Lima's that I remember most...

Looking for a new apartment can be a lot of fun... but when you don't have a job and you're hunting in a city that's 4-5 hours away from where you're living at the time? That's when it just sucks. As many of my readers know, I've been doing just this for the past month or so - looking for an apartment in DC while living in Pittsburgh. Quite frankly, it's been a pain in the ass...

Much of my search was done using craigslist, where an ad for a good-looking apartment would get 30-50 responses from people with varying interest levels... Simply getting a response from ads one replies to is a 50/50 proposition at this point. Then, you have to see the apartment, like it and hope the potential roommate likes you enough to rent to you.

So often, the people renting the room or looking for a roommate have particular characteristics in mind for the people they want to live with. So many ads recruit for particular genders, political orientations, lifestyles or even height! (One house wanted a roommate 6'4" or taller for their house basketball team?!?) Now I might be picky... er... discriminating, but in my experience it's possible to have roommates and friends of all stripes and sizes... I dunno... perhaps some people think that they can accurately and completely describe people they'll get along with... I can't...

People are certainly important, but I've found there are four other factors to be weighed heavily when looking for a place to live: Price, location, quality of the dwelling and "other" - stuff like lease terms, the landlord, etc... In my housing search I've seen the whole gamut of all of these factors and it's hard to say any one is much more or less important... A good apartment has no negatives and at least one or two positives to it...

Anyway, in case you noticed and questioned my use of the past tense in describing the apartment search, that's because it's over. After being rejected at the first five places I tried to take (of the 17 I looked at), I finally put down a deposit on an apartment in Bethesda last night.

Evaluating it on the four factors, I'm pretty happy with the roommates and the price. The location isn't great, but it is convenient to the beltway, 270 and the bus to the metro. The house itself isn't amazing; my room is small-ish and the kitchen leaves something to be desired, but it isn't terrible either... there's plenty of space and it's much nicer than the place I saw in Friendship Heights the day before. Move date is vaguely set for sometime next week... then the job hunt kicks into high gear...

The Divisional Series games begin today... Let's take a look at who's moving on and who isn't...

Cardinals vs. Dodgers
Admittedly, game one is underway as I'm writing this... But since the Dodgers didn't bust out for 12 runs in the first inning, I'm not changing my prediction... The Cards have loads of offense and scored nearly 100 more runs than did the Dodgers this season. Neither team has great starters, although both finished in the top four in ERA... St. Louis is missing its best starter in Chris Carpenter and LA is missing Brad Penny. The one thing the Dodgers do have going for them is the schedule, which allows them to throw Odalis Perez and Jeff Weaver twice, should the series go the distance. After the two of them, it's Jose Lima and... ummm... who?

The Dodgers should also get more support from their defense, which may help... but probably not enough. The Cards also get the first two games at home, and Dodger pitching is about a third of a run worse away from the pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium... Quite frankly, the Dodgers are about the only team I can't see winning the World Series this year, partly because they lack a true strength (other than perhaps their defense) and partly because of a tough first round matchup...
Cardinals in three.

Braves vs. Astros
We've seen this one before... In 2001, 1999 and 1997, the Braves beat the Astros in the Division Series, with the 'stros winning only one of the ten games played. So it's the Braves' series for the taking, right? Well... no.

Houston comes in with a ton of momentum, having won 36 of 46 just to make the playoffs. Sure, they have to be concerned about a letdown, but with the prospect of getting the Braves monkey off of their back, I don't think they'll have a problem getting fired up for the games. Besides, this might be the last best chance for Bagwell and Biggio to get a ring, and the last chance for Clemens to add to this hardware. While the Braves roster changes from year to year, they have an expectation that they'll be back in the playoffs every season, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have the same sense of purpose that there is over in the Houston dugout.

More importantly than intangibles, the Astros have the better top-line talent. Clemens and Oswalt will start 3 of the 5 divisional series games (thanks to Clemens' illness on the final day of the regular season) while the Braves' top starter is... Jaret Wright? John Thomson? It's a testament to Leo Mazzone that he's resuscitated these guys' careers and made them into solid starters, but against guys with better stuff, it's hard to like them that much... Speaking of coaching, I'll give props to Bobby Cox for his regular season managing, but the Braves just haven't gotten it done in the postseason as often as they should have...

The offenses are evenly matched - both scored 803 runs this season and both feature comprable distributions of talent. Berkman vs. Drew, Beltran vs. Andruw, Kent vs. Chipper, Bagwell vs. Giles... I actually like the Astros lineup a little more, but the difference isn't huge...

Mike Hampton looks like a critical player for the Braves in this series. He matches up with Oswalt in game two and Clemens in a game five. Hampton has been pretty average this year, but now and then he can pull out a gem, and he could even bolster the Braves' offense a bit. I'm guessing he'll need to beat one of the big two for the Braves to move on, but even that might not be enough...
Astros in five.

UPDATE:
Angels vs. Red Sox
Sox have more hitting, Sox have better starters... Angels have a great bullpen. But will the Sox be able to keep it together? (Pedro, I'm looking at you)... Originally, I picked the Angels, but that was before I realized that Adam Kennedy and Tim Salmon were both hurt and that Garrett Anderson and Vlad were playing wounded... I picked Anaheim in 5 at first, but in light of these additional developments, I'd like to flip-flop and take the Sox in 5... Then again, that curse really bites...

Yankees vs. Twins
Can the Yanks solve Johan Santana? If not, the Twins have two wins in the bag and just need a third to go along with it... I'd love to see the Twinkies knock off the Evil Empire, but the Yanks have owned 'em for the last few years. Yankees in 5...

oh, and for more in-depth (read: better) previews, go check out Aaron Gleeman's previews at The Hardball Times...

Finally, I've gotten around to tweaking and fixing the template, so OMB should look better... Actually, I had it looking all nice and ready for prime-time in the Blogger preview window, but when I published the new template, it didn't quite work... I've played around with it, and it looks fine for me running IE 6.0 on WinME, even if I don't quite understand how or why the CSS is making it look the way it does... It seemed as if the preview code made a lot more sense - especially when it worked! Oh well... lemme know if there are stray lines or spacings that look too funny...

I've also reshuffled the linkage in the right column... Added some things, took some out and recategorized everything in ways sure to be found objectionable by some... If you have any suggestions for stuff I'm missing, lemme know...