From Philip Matier and Andrew Ross in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle:

Political break-in: Just a day after Barack Obama’s staffers moved into their new state headquarters in Los Angeles, someone broke in last week and stole a pair of laptop computers containing sensitive information about the campaign’s field strategy and its voter contact file.

Other laptops were left behind.

And it turns out there was a nearly identical burglary of his Davenport, Iowa, office about the same time.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Debbie Mesloh declined to speculate on what was behind the L.A. break-in, referring us to Los Angeles police.

We couldn’t reach anyone there for comment, but we can tell you the cops dusted the office on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown for prints.

(With apologies to SI for stealing the title of this entry…)

- Amazing performance on the part of the Red Sox over a very hot Rockies team. Was it proof that the best of the AL can whack away at the best of the Senior Circuit. Hard to disagree, but there’s no arguing Boston came into the Series with throttles wide open while Colorado appeared to have lost some of their mojo from their week-plus layoff. And the Sox had the swagger. Confidence is a powerful weapon to take into a championship game.

- How about that Mike Lowell, an afterthought in the trade that brought Josh Beckett in from the Marlins? A classy guy and player getting his just recognition is a locker room full of personalities and more than one future HOFer. Lowell had a career series in a contract year, true, and even though there’s a more famous 3B on the market now, I can’t see the Sox not bring him back.

(And speaking of that A-Rod, is there a more crass guy in sports than agent Scott Boras? To release news about his client while the Rockies are desparately trying to hang on to their WS hopes tells you all you need to know about the guy. The Karma Police will smack him down. I hope we all get to witness it.)

[Edit: Boras’ later statement: “I apologize to the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies and their players, Major League Baseball and its players, and baseball fans everywhere for that interference. The teams and players involved deserved to be the focus of the evening and honored with the utmost respect. The unfortunate result was not my intent, but is solely my fault. I could have handled this situation better, and for that I am truly sorry.” Wonder if his apology had anything to do with BoSox fans chanting, “Don’t sign A-Rod.”]

- Did you catch Rockies manager Clint Hurdle’s postgame remarks? Classy guy. And watch out for the Rockies: they’ve got some talent and they got close. They could easily represent the NL West in the 2008 postseason, but not the World Series, natch. North Siders, baby!

- If I’m Boston rookies Dustin Pedoria and Jacoby Ellsbury, I’m taking things slow and enjoying every second because these days may never come again. A lot of good players never get to taste the champagne. Savor it, kids, and if you never want to pay for another dinner in New England, bleed Red Sox Red for the rest of your careers. Ask Johnny Damon if he’s welcome in any Boston eatery nowadays.

- Finally, Peter King in his SI column again wrote that football is the most popular American sport, which is true, but baseball’s postseason and championship series is the most difficult of the major sports. Football has the “one-and-done” format where everything is on the line in every single game but it’s done in three hours, and basketball doesn’t really eliminate any of their good teams after the regular season. Admittedly, I can’t speak to hockey and NASCAR seems to run January to December. Baseball is the sport where a mistake in April can eliminate you from October, then the five-game and seven-game series are played live in front of tens of thousands of passionate fans who live/die with every pitch. Every move is analyzed and compared to something done by players in similar circumstances fifty years ago. I could go on, but y’all know it’s all about the numbers and that’s why it’s the best game in the world.

Start the countdown now: about 122 days until spring training.

On this day celebrating Nevada Day, here’s another pix courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives. This is the Senator Cafe somewhere in downtown Carson City. Is it an older version of the Pinecone Cafe found here on Around Carson? It isn’t in this picture to the south of the old capital building. One of the archivists was thinking that tall building in the back housed the Oldfellows Lodge directly north of the current capital complex. Interesting stuff.

Via SI.com, here’s Dallas Clark, a tight end with the 2006 Super Bowl champions Indianapolis Colts, with his unique interpretation of Bon Jovi’s Living On a Prayer.

[Memo from my boss sent to the Nevada Appeal:]

As the Administrator of the Nevada Check Up program, I feel compelled to set the record straight regarding eligibility requirements for participation in the program. Nevada Check Up is Nevada’s version of the federal State Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provides insurance coverage for low-income uninsured children throughout the state; children who might otherwise not receive necessary care or be forced to seek care at hospital emergency rooms, resulting in much greater costs to taxpayers.

Proceed at your own risk »

Via SI.com, here’s a Nike ad from 2004 that illustrates the heartbreak of being a Red Sox fan. They won the Series that year after 80-something years (amateurs).

This time, Boston in 2007 in five games in the deeps snows of Colorado.

Whether you women folks believe it or not, we males do remember certain dates: our birthdates, when our team last won a championship (10/14/1908), our mom’s birthday (5/14), and other little things. My recent significant date: yesterday was the 26th anniversary of my first USAF enlistment. It seems like ten minutes ago.

Here’s another game I should have lost. Down in material, my king is pinned down, and he’s attacking with two rooks and a queen. Then he makes this inexplicible move (#34) to take his queen out of the field of battle and I’m able to go on the offensive and win. Yogi was right about it not being over until it’s over.

Hey, Y’all. Been away from making with the fun and am now back for a few minutes before I delve into the second job stuff known as grading papers. Only got thirty students spread over three classes, so it’s beyond my comprehension how “real” college teachers do it with five or six classes of forty-plus students each. While I’ve been away…

Waddya know about that American League Series? They’re playing some real baseball over there, not like the Colorado Rockies sweeps of their two post-season opponents. Will Boston survive today to force a Game 7 for tomorrow? If they do, you can thank Manny Ramirez for being one cagey and clever dude. Most folks mistook his “who cares if we lose?” remarks as another sign of unrealistic connection to the importance of the games and the Boston fans. In my mind, Manny was being a locker room leader by focusing the media spotlight on him and taking it off of his teammates. Don’t be fooled: he wants to beat his former team badly. This was not another case of “Manny being Manny”; this was Manny putting the team on his back and trying to taking them to the World Series. It might just work, too.

In local news, state gaming and tax revenues came in at far lower than expected levels and the state’s executive branch is scrambling for money. They instituted a hiring freeze on state-funded positions and directed all administrators (except K-12 and Public Safety) to draw up plans for an immediate 5% budget cut, and in the spirit of camaraderie (and obedience), everybody jumped in and is doing just that. Almost everybody. Perennial curmudgeon NSHE Chancellor Jim Rogers said his eight campuses are barely scraping by as it is and will not cut back any further. Based on my time as a full-time and part-time employee, he’s got a point. The NSHE receives repeated mandates from all levels to better prepare and educate Nevada’s adult populace but often the money does not follow the mandates, so teachers and administrators must plug twelve leaks in the dam with only seven fingers. The reality is while the NSHE does operate outside the executive branch, the State writes the checks on a quarterly basis and can reduce those checks as needed. I promise you that while the Governor and Chancellor are taking publicly bites out each other, the presidents are making plans. And the dams will keep leaking in the meantime.

There was good news from the NSHE: in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, there’d been a proposal to deputize, train and arm on-campus workers to act as a volunteer reserve police force in times of crisis. Fortunately, the majority of the Board of Regents had a dose of common sense and voted it down. There are higher-education faculty members who’ve never left school and have had to function in the “real” world. The possibility of giving Berettas to those folks made me a tad nervous. I would have had more confidence in Barney Fife’s gun-handling skills.

Reality check: today is Saturday, October 20, 2007. Osama bin Laden was been free of incarceration, persecution, and imprisonment in the 2,230 days since September 11, 2001.

A recent state ethics committee opinion barred a county employee from serving on her county commission, stating she could have direct budgetary influence over her employers. It’s understandable but a darn shame if the opinion evolves into an official stance barring all public employees from holding office. Nevada’s had a long history of citizen legislators only because there are very few full-time public offices on the payroll. Those who serve are rarely fully compensated for their time and energy and, often, lose money in the deal, but they do it because it needs to be done. If the public employee is barred from office, the available pool of willing volunteers will shrink dramatically to our sorrow.

Yet another link to old Nevada passed on this week. Joey Bishop was the last surviving member of the 1960s Rat Pack that brought visibility and crowds to Las Vegas when it was barely a spot in the road. You have to put the times in perspective. The shows that he and Frank/Sammy/Dean/Peter gave were not for thousands in big arenas, but for dozens or hundreds in relatively small showrooms, so folks were able to get up close and personal with these Hollywood legends. In today’s Reno and Lake Tahoe casinos, you’re more likely to see a “B” level star on stage in the outdoors parking lot than in a cozy room with a live orchestra. Them was the days.

Don’t have much time these days for entertainment, but watched a movie last night that you’ve got to make time for: Surf’s Up. Yes, it’s another one of those silly CGI-animation specials, but the makers spent time on the script and it really feels like one of those old surfing documentaries. Well worth your time. (And Transformers didn’t suck as badly as I thought it would.)

Madison Wolverine Update: our commissioner is more than fully-employed with his day job (I can understand that), so I don’t have a current record, but I’m fairly certainly the Wolverines lost last weekend and have a losing record for the first time this season. Things don’t get easier this week with Amargosa hosting the game. The team is holding on as best it can for the return of injured WR Andre Johnson and suspended RB Chris Henry, both of whom should be back in the next couple of weeks. Wolverines! [Edit: the report is out and we’re at .500 and out of first place. Still a hard game ahead.]

I endorsed Dean Heller as Nevada’s Congressman for District 2 in hopes that he’d keep an open mind, watch out for the little people, and not be a Bush-administration puppet. Wrong. According to the Washington Post (subscription required), he votes with the Bushies nearly 90% of the time and his recent SCHIP stance really burns me. He also voted against reducing troop levels and repealing tax cuts for oil companies, some of whom are reaping record-level profit levels. I won’t make that mistake twice.

Finally, got to give a shout-out to Deborah Kerr of the King and I and An Affair to Remember. She was a classy lady, the consummate professional, and sexy as hell in an old-school kind of way. Here’s the famous picture of her and Burt Lancaster making out on the beach in From Here to Eternity. Check out who’s on top. That’s all you need to know about her. Thanks, Deb.