Why do I find myself cheering for the Yankees tonight?

So after enjoying a weekend that included a Terps win (barely), a pair of GREAT Caps wins and a Ravens win (OK, and the Redskins demolished the Lions, which I would have lost a lot of money on if I was gambling), I find myself conflicted in a game that has nothing to do with local teams.

Here I am watching TBS (not in HD because I suck and don't have an HDTV ... seriously ... I wasn't lying when I said I suck), finding myself HAPPY that the Yanks have blown the game wide open in game three of the ALDS against the Indians.

I'm sure part of that is my hatred of the Red Sox, but the majority of it is because of my hatred of the five-game series.

I was rooting for the Cubs (disappointed) and Phillies (disappointed) yesterday, and here I am again rooting for a team in a 2-0 hole in a five-game series.

And it's all because I can't stand the thought of a team playing a 162-game regular season, getting into the playoffs, then finding themselves on the golf course four or five days later.

I'm also critical of the NHL's 45-year playoff setup where every team is guaranteed to play at least 12 playoff games as long as they meet the salary floor (that's all fake), but baseball's playoff system is one of the most hypocritical things in sports.

Why do you play a grueling, marathon, other-words-that-mean-really-long 162-game season with the intent of really weeding out the BEST teams in the league only to let the combatants in the League Championship Series (plural) get decided by a five-game crapshoot?

I'd love to see Major League Baseball go back to a setup where the AL's regular season winner plays the NL's regular season winner in a nine-game World Series -- or at least dump the third division and the Wild Card and jump straight from regular season to the LCSes (that's gramatically poor) -- but TBS and Fox have money and damnit, the MLB's going to get more than nine games worth.

But, please, at the very least, can we dump this five-game crap and have seven-game divisional series?

Basketball made the change, and how dare you question David Stern? You don't dare, that's how.

It's not like the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Indians, Cubs or Phillies are going to have trouble filling their stadiums for that ONE WHOLE EXTRA HOME PLAYOFF GAME that they stand to gain in a seven-game series (yeah I can't speak for the Rockies or the University of Maryland Student Newspapers).

And besides, if you're going for the cash dollas with an extra playoff round, why not go the whole nine and add another game or two or three or four in each of those series?

That's right. Logic. I use it.

Make it happen.