DETROIT – Because there is a place on the Internet for everything statistical in baseball, there – of course – exists a website that measures an umpire's performance. It is called Brooksbaseball.net. And if you click the tab marked "Strikezone Map Tool," and tap in the date of Saturday's first game of the American League division series, you will see that home plate umpire Jim Reynolds called 10 strikes outside of a typical strike zone against the Oakland Athletics.

Justin Verlander gave up one run and three hits in seven innings against the A's. (Reuters)These pitches would be up to a foot outside of the normal zone and they were all thrown by Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander to Oakland's left-handed hitters.

This would explain why several of those hitters stalked away from the plate, muttering at Reynolds, after striking out on strikes that were not strikes.

But it also explains part of the brilliance of a man who is probably the best pitcher in baseball: When given the gift of a strike zone wider than it should be, he knows just how to exploit it.

"To

DETROIT – Pat Neshek gave his little boy a baseball name because this was the game that had sustained him for the 32 years of his life. And Gehrig seemed perfect because what could be more wholesome and strong and dignified than Gehrig? When Pat asked his wife Stephanee if they could have a son named for a first baseman her answer was simple.

Of course, she told him.

And now with Gehrig John Neshek gone just a day after birth – his death as public and heartbreaking and hard to explain as his namesake's – the boy's father had one last thing to do in the fog of his worst week. The Oakland Athletics reliever would pitch in a playoff game.

Neshek made the slow walk across the Comerica Park field in the seventh inning of Saturday's Game 1 of the American League Division Series. A TV cameraman trailed behind. Neshek ascended the mound and ran his fingers across the black circular patch on the sleeve of his jersey with the letters "GJN" stitched in white. Then he faced baseball

WASHINGTON – In a scene that resembled nothing like the storming of San Juan Hill, the Washington Nationals ended the seven-year denigration of Theodore Roosevelt's good name. After more than 500 defeats they finally allowed a giant-headed visage of the 26th president to win their daily President's Race.

This needed to be done. What started off as a joke in the summer of 2006, the team's second in Washington, when the Nats were mired at the bottom of the National League East and the stands at RFK Stadium were empty, had gone on long enough. The other three presidents in the race – stolen from Milwaukee's famous sausage race – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln jockeyed nightly for victories in the middle of the fourth inning at RFK and later Nationals Park while pathetic Teddy became a punch line; the running gag of a franchise going nowhere.

The reality is that Roosevelt was hardly a buffoon. He was a valiant

NEW ORLEANS – Today Terrance Donnels is making Les Miles dance.

Over the years he's done a lot of things to LSU's football coach: Dropping Miles on motorboats, fleeing exploding buildings or using a machine gun to obliterate a Webster's Dictionary all in doctored videos called GIFs that he posts on the internet above the jagged signature of "LSUFreek." Wonderful is the symmetry when a satirist finds his perfect foil. LSUFreek mocks all the SEC coaches and much of college football, but nobody has proven a better fit for him than goofy old, grass-eating, syntax-mangling Les Miles in his LSU baseball cap.

LSU coach Les Miles as Elvis. (Click to see GIF)

This time Freek is altering an image of Miles at a press conference to make the coach look like a fat Elvis clad in a garish bejeweled jumpsuit. The image moves in the slightly jerky style of a GIF but if you watch it long enough, allowing yourself to be entranced by the gyrating coach in baubles and beads, you can almost feel Elvis even if you don't see it in Miles' face.

BALTIMORE – They walked like conquering heroes through the tunnel of football gladiators. And the greatest decision the NFL's returning officials had to make Thursday night was whether to tip their caps to the roar that rolled down from above.

Head linesman Wayne Mackie tips his cap as he walks on the field Thursday night. (AP)It was less than an hour before their first game back after the national nightmare that was their lockout, and the sound that surrounded them from the still half-filled M&T Bank Stadium felt like sweet music. They suspected such a welcome as they dressed in their tiny cinder-blocked room beneath the stadium's stands. They discussed what it would feel like to step into cheers. And then they debated a staggering question they never had reason to consider before:

Do they doff their caps?

They are officials, after all. Hardly here to be the show. And because of this they seemed resolute in appearing oblivious to the only love they will ever feel in a football stadium. They entered the tunnel without expression. But as the cheers

If ever there was a franchise that was owed make-up and deserved a gift victory, it is the Seattle Seahawks.

On Monday night the Green Bay Packers lost a game they should have won when Seahawks receiver Golden Tate was awarded possession of a ball he didn't appear to have. It was a horrible game-ending call, a humiliation for the NFL only made worse by the fact that two officials standing beside the play looked at each other and made opposite calls. One said interception, the other called touchdown.

Vinny Testaverde is surrounded by a number of Seahawks during the controversial '98 game. (AP)It was probably the worst game-ending call in the NFL since the day the Seahawks stood on the wrong side of an official throwing his hands in the air and signaling for a touchdown that never happened. This was back in 1998 and the score was given not to a Seattle receiver but New York Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde – who lay on the ground, firmly in the grasp of Seahawks defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy and two yards short of the end zone.

And yet head linesman

BALTIMORE – On the afternoon after his brother died, Baltimore Ravens receiver Torrey Smith arrived at M&T Bank Stadium long before any of his teammates. He walked through a set of steel double doors painted black and into the empty home locker room.

It was 5 p.m. on Sunday. The NFL's afternoon games were barely in their second quarter. The Ravens' game with the New England Patriots wouldn't kick off for more than 3½ hours. But on a day of tumult, a day of misery, a day that began with news of a motorcycle accident in the middle of the night and was filled with a drive through the darkness to see his family and then back to Baltimore, this was his solitude. This was where he could be alone.

"I'd be one of the first guys too," Ravens running back Ray Rice would later say.

Inside the sanctuary of the locker room, Smith took off his red button-up shirt, blue jeans and tan work boots, pulled on a white Ravens T-shirt and prepared to play the game they will forever remember

WASHINGTON – When a baseball postseason finally came back to this city after 79 years, the Washington Nationals did not dance in their clubhouse. Players didn’t dance on tables, don goggles, spray alcohol or do any of the silly things baseball players do when something has been clinched.

Collectively, manager Davey Johnson and the Nats didn't feel like celebrating on Thursday. (Getty)The first postseason in eight decades was greeted with just a touch more euphoria than any other victory: with handshakes and high-fives and a subdued champagne toast in the clubhouse.

To the Nats players, Thursday’s clinching of the playoffs doesn’t mean much. All they have won is a spot in the postseason – an assurance of at worst making this year’s new wild-card game. They say the real celebration will come when they clinch the National League East. That probably will happen next week.

“We’re not really thinking about the wild card,” catcher Kurt Suzuki said. “We’re thinking about winning the division.”

“We’ve got a bigger picture in mind,” added shortstop Ian Desmond.

But what the