SF Chronicle’s Steve Kroner tells all (well, most) about baseball playoffs on TV and radio.

Marlins-Giants: 1 p.m. Tuesday, 5 p.m. Wednesday and either 1 or 5 p.m. Friday. The games will air on KTVU (Channel 2) and ESPN, with ESPN2 a possibility for Friday.

Red Sox-A’s: 1 p.m. Wednesday and 1 p.m. Thursday. KTVU has both games, with ESPN carrying Wednesday’s game and ESPN2 doing Thursday’s.

Also here are the September and October (!!) schedules so far for the Giants and Athletics.

Meanwhile, I still haven’t found a solution to the problem of DirecTV’s video signal being delayed five or six seconds compared to the radio; this makes it difficult to tune in to KNBR or KFRC when the Fox or ESPN network broadcast teams get particularly annoying. Ideally I’d like a simple audio delay box to attach inline to my stereo. It would need to be adjustable between, say, three to eight seconds, to cover the least and most amount of delay I’ve seen. Any ideas?

SF Chron sportswriter Ray Ratto has an insightful column today about the Bay Area teams’ division series. The Giants (NL West) will play the Marlins (NL Wild Card) while the Athletics (AL West) will face the Red Sox (AL Wild Card).

The last time the Oakland A’s had a reason to grouse about the Boston Red Sox, it was because they were waving the kind of money at Billy Beane that the A’s wouldn’t think to wave at Miguel Tejada.

…

The last time the San Francisco Giants had any kind of mad-on for the Florida Marlins, it was because the Marlins speed-bagged them through the 1997 playoffs. The Giants won the NL West, and what it got them was Kevin Brown, Robb Nen, Devon White, Gary Sheffield, Moises Alou, Livan Hernandez, Edgar Renteria and a three-and-out they still haven’t figured out six years later.

I haven’t been able to find out the A’s-Red Sox or Giants-Marlins season records on MLB’s damnable Web site, so if you can find a link let me know.

Of the other two matchups, I’m happy to see that the Athletics won’t meet the Yankees (AL East) or Twins (AL Central) until the second round, considering their recent post-season record against both teams. The Braves walked away with the NL East again, as usual, and as of tonight the NL Central is still a tossup between the Cubs and Astros. I have to hope for the Astros, ’cause if Houston beats Atlanta then the Giants can continue their total ownage of Minute Maid Park (nee Enron Field).

Note the absence of any Southern California teams in the above discussion. That’s as it should be.

Tony Smith of The Register reports that Doctor Who will return to TV in 2005.

Doctor Who is returning to the nation’s TV screens in 2005, the BBC said today.

Laid to rest in 1989 – though re-animated in 1996 in a rather naff, ‘we don’t get it’ US TV movie, not considered by many fans to be part of the Who canon – the series still has legions of fans around the world.

Lorraine Heggessey, Controller of the BBC’s main channel, BBC One, said a few years back that she would like to bring the family-oriented series back. However, it is believed that contentions over broadcast and other rights were preventing the BBC from making such a move. The rights are thought to centre on the deal struck with Universal Studios to produce the 1996 TV movie, which starred the rather good Paul Withnail and I McGann.

Today, however, Heggessey said all such issues had been resolved and that a series of scripts written by Queer as Folk scriptwriter Russell T Davies had been given the green light.

The Register being a UK publication, the linked article quite naturally centers on the BBC announcement. Hopefully US public television will pick up the new episodes; I shudder to think of the butchery the SciFi channel would perform if Viacom got their gre[ed|as]y corporate hands on it.

Last look saves trapped cat

A cat locked in a house for two months without food or water was rescued after concerned citizens searched the home one last time.

Cecil the cat was “nothing but skin and bones” when rescuers found him hiding under a chair last month.

“He was so little and weak,” said Elizabeth Hollenberg.

Cecil was treated at a veterinarian’s office, where he was weighed at five pounds.

Note that I only post cat stories where the cat in question survives. I don’t like the other kind.

Opera Software released version 7.20 of their excellent Web browser for Windows this week. It’s available in a free, advertising-supported version and a paid (US $39) ad-free version.

I use it as my browser of choice, launching IE only for those ill-designed sites which use the increasingly small subset of proprietary extensions Opera doesn’t understand. Significantly, my bank’s site works just fine with Opera, as do the large majority of e-commerce sites.