5-at-10: Baseball’s big night, Brady throwing bombs, Rushmore of fanbases who deserve a title

Man, this has been a fun week. And it’s only Wednesday.

From the “Talks too much” studio, keep on keeping on – unless you want to bail, right coach?

Chicago Cubs

That was fun.

The Cubs, in front of a raucous and energized Wrigley Field crowd, advanced to the NLCS with a 6-4 win over St. Louis on Tuesday afternoon.

The magical run for the kiddie Cubbies continues. The power blasts from the youngsters – they hit a record six homers Monday, all of which came from guys 26 or younger, and nine of the team’s 10 home runs in the series were by the kiddie corps – keep coming. The fun and excitement keeps building.

Heck, even Barack Obama, a renowned White Sox backer, is wishing the Cubs good luck. (It would be fun to be be in that seventh year as President and know you don’t have another election to worry about, you know?)

With that – hey Kyle Schwarber just homered again – the intensity of the moment and the potential of ending an epic string of postseason futility grows.

That this was the first postseason series clinching win at Wrigley – which is only 100 years old and was opened a U.S. stamp cost two cents and 9-0 Cornell won the NCAA football title – was not lost on anyone.

In fact, it could be a precursor for what may be the Chicago fall.

Back to the Future, part II, indeed.

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Dodgers survive

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher of his generation 11 months of out the year.

That lone exception is October.

Tuesday, with the Dodgers’ season on the brink and manager Don Mattingly’s job potentially hanging in the balance, Kershaw became the “unhittable monster” the Mets feared.

In a 3-1 win Tuesday, Kershaw threw 94 pitches on three days rest and went seven innings. He allowed only four base runners, and Daniel Murphy’s solo homer was the only time a Mets player advanced as far as second base.

He was dominant. He was the Kershaw we expect to see after dominant regular seasons.

Now, Kershaw has flipped the script and the Dodgers are the favorite in the series now that the series is tied at two. The Dodgers will send Zach Grienke out for a win-or-go-home Game 5.

Granted the Mets Jacob deGrom is a young stud, so this could be an epic pitching match-up.

And it was put in place by an epic pitching performance from Kershaw.

In October. Finally.

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Brady firing shots

OK, Tom Brady is pretty accomplished at this life thing.

Dude has four Super Bowl titles. Dude makes eight figures a year playing football. Dude is married to a Brazilian supermodel who makes more than twice he does. Dude is on every shortlist of the greatest to ever play the coolest position in sports.

Enough? No? One more? OK, here’s the house dude is selling.

Enough? Yes, that’s enough.

OK, we have established the baseline of Brady’s skill set.

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention that if the DeflateGate suspension had not been overturned, this would be the week he’d be returning and that return would be dominating sports news as we know it.

That said, Brady’s Patriots will face the Colts this week, and here’s saying that the Colts role in the entire DeflateGate BID-ness will not go unnoticed this week.

Still, as good as Brady his weekly Boston-area radio interview often is a crossroad for controversy. That’s the place he loaded the gun on the DeflateGate gun with his snide comments and jokes about it before it became a big deal/

Monday, he called Coca-Cola poison and blamed Tony the Tiger for childhood obesity.

Trying to defend his personal trainer and business partner Alex Guerrero, who has been investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for making false claims and impersonating a doctor. (No word whether he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the previous evening before making those claims.)

Hey, have your opinions, Tom, and it’s been a long time since we’ve had a Coke. Too sugary. (Well, unless you add a little hint of a little you know.)

Carpet bombing specific products for major national issues, though, is as short-sighted as blaming football for all sports-related head traumas.

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This and that

– College hoops 1-351 from CBSsports.com. In case you’re curious, UT is 104 and UTC is 184. The top-ranked SEC team is Kentucky at 2; the top-ranked SoCon team is ETSU at 175. Vandy, for what it’s worth, is 22nd

– Baseball TV numbers are up 33 percent from last year and are at the highest level since 2007. Those include the overnight numbers of more than 5 million (3.2 share) checking out the National League doubleheader of Game 3s on TBS on Monday. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Monday night football game drew more than 12 million viewers (7.7 share). The NFL is all-powerful.

– Interesting story blaming Seattle’s struggles on the blockbuster deal that allowed the Seahawks to get Jimmy Graham in a trade.

– Liked how TFP columnist Mark Wiedmer found a new – and local – connection in the Steve Spurrier resignation story from Monday.

– We can all strike Lamar Odom from the list of folks who will watch our kids, right? Dude was passed out in a brothel, and it’s not often we get to use ‘brothel’ in a sports headline.

– The next Coen Brothers movie – “Hail, Caesar” – looks absolutely awesome in its awesomeness. Here’s the trailer.

– Crazy internet fact of the day: According to Historical Photos, at the height of his drug dealing powers, Pablo Escobar made so much cash that he spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to hold his cash together. And that was in the 1980s. Heck, even Warren Buffett thinks that’s a lot of cash.

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Today’s question

The postseason baseball has been fun.

And there are two decisive Game 5s tonight. Awesome.

That said, the Cubs storyline is crazy fun, and the atmosphere at Wrigley has been electric.

Some would think the Cubs and their fans deserve a title. We think like William Money, when he told Little Bill in “Unforgiven” – “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”

With that in mind, what’s your Rushmore of teams whose fan base ‘deserves’ a chance to celebrate a title?