Tigers, Orioles Give Meaning to Meaningless September Baseball

On Monday afternoon, while walking home from work, I found myself doing something that automatically—acutely—made me question my own sanity, which is to say that I found myself listening to the radio broadcast of a game between the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers.

There was a superficially satisfying answer to the question of why I would have voluntarily done this to myself: It was the only game on. The 4:10 p.m. ET start was Monday’s only afternoon contest. There was no other baseball, and I wasn’t particularly interested in pursuing either the minor self-betterment of an educational podcast or the mild dread of a half-hour inside my own mind. I was going to listen to afternoon…