Ah, the instant magic of Uncle Bud's second wild card! While an entire list of cities might have long since moved their attentions solely to football were this any other year, the additional route into the playoffs is keeping the sport on the front burner in many locales well into September. Seriously, think about this for a minute: Were it not for an additional playoff team, most of the country's second largest market (Los Angeles) would have already checked out, the defending world champions would be assessing where it all went wrong and Pittsburgh fans wouldn't have anything additional to shoot for in the team's quest to stop its run of losing seasons. In addition, extra importance has been placed on winning your division, adding an extra layer of intrigue to a majority of the races. Oh, and there are three National League teams sitting at 69 wins that can still imagine a Colorado Rockies-type run putting them in the playoffs where, hey, anything can happen. The Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers and Arizona Diamondbacks are the real reason I started this post because there's been some chatter among their fanbases that they could still erase the six-game deficit that...