Over at VEB we get the lowdown for the post-season bench. Unfortunately that got me thinking about some comedian I heard on "The Tonight Show" many years ago. He pointed out that when you're 7 years old, you realize you were an idiot when you were 5. When you're 11, you realize you were an idiot when you were 7. When you're 16, you realize you were an idiot when you were 11. When you're 21... The punchline was whether 90 year olds think they were idiots when they were 80.

That is, I've spent too much time in the past worrying about the post-season roster. Oh, the back end of the roster in the 2002 post-season, especially the NLCS, was classic for its dreadfulness. Garrett Stephenson, Mike Difelice as the #3 catcher, and an injured Scott Rolen might have been the worst use of rosters spaces 23 through 25 in post-season history. They also were irrelevant. Hit 1 for 1,000 with runners in scoring position and get some untimely bad pitching, and it doesn't matter if you've got the 1961 version of Jerry Lynch on your bench, especially if your manager refuses to pinch hit for your pitcher in a tie game in the 9th. Sure, the #25 spot could matter, but it ranks somewhere below comfortable shoes for Albert Pujols and the appropriate Sleep Numbers for Mark Mulder and Larry Walker.

Maybe my apathy could be shaken if the candidates were more promising, since none of these guys is a perfect fit, as VEB pointed out. It's bad enough that Hector Luna's a lock, in spite of a putrid batting line at AAA that Dan Szymborski and Nate Silver are likely to get backwards when they computes MLEs. I guess you go with John Gall, since if you PH John Mabry or John Rodriguez for the pitcher, some manager's liable to think he wants a lefty facing David Eckstein (based on fluky 2005 splits) and Larry Walker. Of course if the Giants complete their comeback, maybe you go with the one Cardinal outfielder on this page.