So, the name "Cecil Cooper" flashed on the bottom of my hi-def ESPN screen, as I’m watching the 4th inning of the Padres-Brewers game  tonight.

I’ve been doing Red Sox-Twins, Orioles-Yankees all night, but an HD ballgame involving my Aunt Jane’s Padres caught my fancy about 20 minutes ago. (I’m gonna throw on my Padres old-school, mustard and puke brown lid to combat what the Brewers have done tonight!)

Today, Cecil Cooper was named "permanent" managers of the Houston Astros. Funny, right now, the Milwaukee Brewers are wearing Cecil Cooper’s uniform from 1982. Seems that for the biggest game in several decades in the great midwestern city of Milwaukee, the Brewers decided to go "throwback" to the only thing they have to throw back to — our pain of the autumn of 1982.

Not to geez on you, but when I see that crazy cartoon glove and ball and that blue and bright yellow — maybe the greatest baseball logo of all time — I think of Cecil Cooper, Bernie Brewer, Harvey’s Wallbangers and Ben Oglivie. And Pete "F-ing" Vuckovich and the whole band of those Shotz-drinking pirates from Laverne & Shirley-ville.

Cecil Cooper signed my first baseball, one that my cousin gave me in 1973 when I was 4 years old. Luis Tiant, Yaz, Fisk — they were all on that ball!

Anyway it’s fun watching a classic pennant race baseball. It’s one where NO ONE knows the outcome, only the odds. ANYTHING can happen here and classic moments are bound to ensue — big hits, big plays, big pitching, clutch performances! We’ll see if before Sunday night — GUARANTEED!

The Mets are unravelling. The Phillies are having a party. The Brewers’ fans look blinded by an actual late September game with significance, their first in a generation — LITERALLY!!!!

Oh, and the Phillies haven’t tasted the postseason since 1993 — since Nails and Daulton and the Wild Thing and Schilling as a very young man.

And the Rockies? For the life of me, I can’t name one player on their team beyond Todd Helton. Some Holliday guy? Rodrigo Lopez? Larry Bigbie? I dunno…

And the Cubs and Diamondbacks feel like they’re in, although we’re not even sure of that!

But it’s a great night to be inside watching baseball. MAN…I LOVE BASEBALL!!!

It WOULD be a HELLUVA lot better being over at the stadium with the Orioles battling the Yankees for something beyond the cellar of major league baseball again.

P.S. Rick Sutcliffe is calling the action from Milwaukee. You may laugh, you may cry. BUT…if I owned the Orioles (or was the "GM"), Rick Sutcliffe would be my first phone call to manage the team. He was one of my favorites in his day here — a class act who "got it" — and he’d represent the team with the authority and dignity worth of a BALTIMORE Orioles representative!

I don’t know if he’d be any good at it. But it would be fun finding out!!!

And he wouldn’t STAND losing without kicking people’s asses.

Love me some Sut!!!