News and notes from the week that was:

After a couple months of purgatory, the Cubs fired Dusty Baker this week. Joe Girardi, canned by the Marlins after a disagreement with management, is being hailed as the frontrunner to replace Baker. With Baker now out, I must thank him for doing his unintentional best to destroy the tiny bit of hope that Cubs fans had for their franchise. While guiding the Cubs to the division title in 2003, he repeatedly overstressed the arms of his two best young pitchers, then proceeded to lobby to have his roster stocked with speedy, flashy-gloved, albeit terrible-hitting position players while running a fan favorite out of town. So we must bid adieu to you, Dusty; Cardinal Nation will miss you.

Other managerial firings: Girardi, Felipe Alou, Buck Showalter, and Frank Robinson. Having followed the saga of the Expos/Nationals and rooting hard for the nomadic '03 and '04 wild card-contending 'Spos, I developed a huge amount of respect for Robinson. If this is indeed his final managerial campaign, it's a sad end to what was a fun couple of seasons as manager of that franchise. However, his overall managerial career was fairly unimpressive, and thus is probably coming to an end at his advanced age of 71.

As I write this, I'm watching the Oakland A's take on the Twins in Game 3 of their Division Series out in Oakland. The A's have gone small-market this season, shrinking the 50,000-plus seat McAfee Coliseum to a capacity of 34,077 by placing a green tarp over the seats in the third deck of the stadium, which they share with the Raiders. That worked fine during the regular season, as the A's averaged 24,000 or so at home. But seeing the tarp up for this game was a bit of a surprise - upon further research, it appears that they will be keeping it that way for the playoffs, for whatever reason. Maybe it's just me, but if the A's end up in the World Series, wouldn't playing in a "sold out" ballpark with a tarp covering 16,000 empty seats be a bit embarrassing?

And to top it all off for irony, right as I started writing all that, my McAfee VirusScan came on and reeeeeeeally slowed down my computer.

Apparently, Anthony Reyes was left off the Cardinals' playoff roster. Jason Marquis was not. WTF? This means that Jeff Weaver would start a possible Game 5 in San Diego on three days' rest. If pigs fly, anyway.

Yeah, that's because the Cardinals took the first two games of the Division Series in San Diego. Carp was dominant in Game 1, and then Jeff Weaver, he of the 0-2, 9.72 postseason career, shut out the Padres for five innings in Game 2. The ideal situation for the Cards would obviously be to sweep with Suppan in Game 3, saving Carpenter's next start (and setting up the rotation perfectly) for the NLCS. As for Weaver, the Padres have the worst lineup of the four NL playoff teams, so I'm not holding my breath regarding the rest of his October - but getting a victory with him on the mound is like stealing a game. We can only hope it happens again elsewhere.

Update 11:45 p.m. ET:

Yes, we will. We are thankful that he, in some way, has enriched our lives. As one of baseball's greatest ambassadors, he will be missed.