“ . . . World Series preview — I’m sorry. MLB Finals preview. MLB Finals preview. This isn’t a World Series. The World Series used to feature the pennant winners of the American and National Leagues, not one team that finished fourth versus a team that finished fifth. That’s Bob Costas’s phrase, his great fear about what the wild card might do: superimpose an NBA-playoff quality over baseball’s traditions and leave us with a tournament, where a good but hardly the best team on a hot streak could reach the title round — or two of them.”

So said Keith Olbermann. He too has taken to calling the World Series, disparagingly, “the MLB Finals.” Hard left in his politics, the ESPN2 commentator is, mirabile dictu, a hardcore traditionalist in matters baseball. I just came across this video from last Tuesday:

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