What you missed over the weekend

Did you know that there is a 100% correlation between watching football and death? Really, every single person who has ever watched a football game has either died or will, without question, die in the future. Stop the dying, people. Stop watching football. It’s for your own good.

In case you haven’t decided to turn your life around and drop the demon pigskin, here’s what you missed this past weekend on HBT. First, the playoff action:

The Cardinals stunned the Nationals in the ninth inning late Friday night.
But don’t worry, the Nats will be OK long term.
Still, OK or not, until they win a World Series, their legacy will always be that of the team that tempted fate and paid the price.
Meanwhile, the Giants watched and waited on the tarmac.
The series may have already started, but our ALCS preview and NLCS preview are still worth your time.
Over in the ALCS, Raul Ibanez played the hero again, but it wasn’t enough.
And losing the game wasn’t even the worst part of it. And the playoffs won’t be the same without Captain Jetes.
For the Tigers, their closer’s ninth inning meltdown was a blessing in disguise.
Stay classy, Washington: rooting for the Cardinals gets a Washington Wizards player threatened.
All the talk about Alex Rodriguez struggling when, actually, Robinson Cano has been worse.
And the umpiring has been even worse than Robinson Cano. And Joe Girardi is all over it.
Not Jose Valverde comes through.
The Cardinals beat the Giants, and it’s all on Madison Bumgarner.

Meanwhile, in non-playoffs news:

Jaime Garcia needs surgery.
Mixed signal theater: Bud Selig wants more instant replay. Yet his deputy, Joe Torre dismissed the botched Omar Infante call yesterday as just one of them things that happen. Get it together, baseball.
Oh, and Joe Torre is probably not gonna manage again. If he did, I presume that he’d change his tune about replay.
Jason Giambi a serious candidate to manage the Rockies? OK.
Tragedy struck the Carlos Corporan family.
The Dodgers dumped their hitting coach.
The Mets are going to talk to David Wright about a contract soon.

Wow. This time next week we’re gonna know who’s in the World Series. Nifty.

Fox Sports Detroit has named Matt Shepard their new full-time play-by-play guy for Tigers games. Shepard will work with analysts Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson, who will split time.

This is the move in response to former longtime announcers Mario Impemba and Rod Allen getting suspended and later fired following an in-booth altercation in Chicago last September. The two of them, who weren’t exactly friends, reportedly fought over a chair, with conflicting reports of how serious the fight was. An anonymous witness said Allen put Impemba in a choke hold. Allen recently gave an interview in which he denied that and said it was only some pushing and shoving. Either way, it ended their 16-year team-up for Tigers games.

Shepard has worked for Fox Sports Detroit for nearly 20 years, doing fill-in play-by-play for the Tigers — he replaced Impemba for the last few weeks of last season — and for Detroit Pistons games. Gibson has been a part time analyst for the network for the past couple of seasons, splitting time with Allen. Morris has done Tigers, Blue Jays and Twins games over the years, sometimes even splitting time between the Twins and Tigers, which is rather unusual.

Shepard is pretty good at his job. While Tigers fans liked and were familiar with Impemba, there won’t be a falloff in quality. Gibson makes some good analytical points and has a surprisingly sharp and biting sense of humor about him, but his gruff and monotone delivery is not everyone’s cup of tea. You get used to it. Morris is not my cup of tea — he tends to do a lot of the “back in my day” stuff former players often do — but I’m pretty sure he could recite the dictionary on TV in Detroit and a lot of Tigers fans would tune in. Such is life.

Follow @craigcalcaterra