They say that there's nothing better than a Game Seven in sports. I'm not exactly sure who "they" are, but whoever they may be, they're some wise bastards. Even the most jaded sports fan can't help but get excited about the ultimate elimination game.

Behind the left-handed arm of one Jon Lester, the Red Sox will be looking to put the finishing touches on their second miraculous ALCS comeback in the last half-decade. They have all of the momentum on their side, and even the burning hatred of most baseball fans outside of Massachusetts doesn't appear to be fazing them one bit.

Matt Garza will attempt to right the ship for Rays, who appear as though they're resigned to this seemingly inevitable fate of theirs.

As the Rays walked down the tunnel to their clubhouse following the loss, heads hung, a teammate tapped shortstop Jason Bartlett on the shoulder, leaned in and said: “It had to be this way.”

So it is.

(Certainly a different tone from the Rays than the one they had earlier in the series, when they were not only kicking Boston's ass, but also sleeping with their women!)

Assuming that TBS has gotten their act together, the battle to face Philly in the World Series will appear on your television screens in a little over half an hour. But don't go anywhere; World Champion live-blogger Matt Sussman will be here shortly to guide you through the festivities. Do enjoy.

ALCS is taken to the limit [Yahoo!]

The Curse of Evan Longoria's Alleged Overconfidence and Debauchery [The Sporting Blog]

As millions of baseball enthusiasts tuned in last night hoping to see Game Six of the American League Championship Series, a surprise awaited them: They weren't greeted by Josh Beckett's steely gaze, instead they were met by Steve Harvey's toothy smile.

Virtually anyone watching in the U.S. had to wade through about 20 minutes of a rerun of the Steve Harvey Show, and missed BJ Upton's solo homerun in the bottom of the first inning. It was not a great moment for TBS. And here's the official explanation as to what caused the delay:

"Two circuit breakers in our Atlanta transmission operations tripped causing the master router and its backup — which are necessary to transmit any incoming feed outbound — to shut down. This impacted our live feed from being distributed to any of the other networks in the Turner portfolio and caused the delay in our coverage. Both our primary and backup routers were impacted by this problem. We apologize to baseball fans for this mishap that caused a delay in our coverage."

The first pitch of Game Seven is penciled in for about 8:15 tonight. Does anybody know when Frank TV usually comes on?

Game 6 TV broadcast interrupted [MLB.com]

Top 10 'difficulties' TBS had with start of ALCS broadcast [Big League Stew]

Big League Stew spoke with TBS exec Jeff Gregor and he said this:

"This is just a hypothesis on my side: You think there are a lot of (FrankTV) spots, but there's actually not as many as you think. They're just so good at entertaining and engaging that when they come on you feel like you just saw one not too long ago."

Gregor also said that TBS is " going to make sure at least that there's a very good variety so that there will be no wear-out of the various jokes that Frank is entertaining us with."

Mission accomplished.

TBS exec: FrankTV ads "entertaining and engaging" [Big League Stew]

Reynolds joins Dennis Eckersley as the new TBS analysts, and both will serve fill-in roles for regular-season broadcasts, and are negotiating to join the newtork's post-season coverage. "[I feel] like everything is behind me now. I'm moving on, and a lot of doors are opening," Reynolds told USA Today. Well sure: Recently settling your $5 million wrongful termination lawsuit against ESPN will tend to do that. "I stood on principle and never wavered."

My favorite part of the Harold Reynolds saga? It's too hard to chose; although the fact that he hired a private detective to dig up stuff on ESPN still makes me smile. But those days are gone forever I'm afraid. Welcome back, HR. I was beginning to think that I'd have to start watching MLB.com.

Harold Reynolds Returns As TV Baseball Analyst [USA Today]

We're not sure why we enjoyed Mota so much. (But we were hardly the only ones.) Maybe it's because the job of sideline reporter is such a silly one that we appreciated Mota's ... well, the man just strikes us as suave. He's a smooth operator, with a difficult-to-place accent, dropping dimes of empty knowledge on us, asking silly questions to people who don't want to answer them in just sincere enough of a way that we find ourselves mesmerized. We hope he's back on TBS next year.

He's also Manny Mota's son and was in For The Love Of The Game. Swoon!

Farewell, Jose Mota [ Because I Didn't Want To Go To Grad School..]

Citing network policy, ESPN says it does not accept advertising that promotes competitive programming on other networks unless it is contractually obligated to do so - and it states that it's not obligated to under its new media deal with MLB. It says other networks have similar policies.

The good news is that there will be less Dane Cook on ESPN. The bad news is that Peter Gammons and company could be banned from setting up their "Baseball Tonight" remote shoots inside the stadium.

By the way, here are those TBS broadcasting teams:

Chip Caray-Tony Gwynn (Craig Sager on the field)
Ted Robinson- Joe Simpson (Marc Fein)
Don Orsillo-Steve Stone
Dick Stockton-Bob Brenly

We don't know who some of those people are, which immediately makes them improvements on Joe Morgan.

ESPN And MLB Feud Over Playoff Promos [The Fanhouse]

We keep forgetting that TBS is going to be showing a ton of baseball games this year — along with the Division Series and the NLCS — and Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn are going to be the main analysts. Gwynn and Chip Carey are the lead broadcasters, and Ripken's gonna be the studio guy with Ernie Johnson. We suspect he will dial it down somewhat from Charles Barkley.

Who's not listed here, by the way? Harold Reynolds! We were hoping Harold would find a spot on the roster, but apparently, he's been put in the Do Not Call list. We don't know about you, but having baseball back reminds us how much we kinda miss him.

TBS Lands Ripken, Gwynn [SI.com]