Every baseball season starts out with 30 major league teams, which after a full 162-game campaign, are quickly whittled down from eight, to four and finally two, who meet in the World Series to determine the year's champions. Tomorrow, as one of the last four teams alive in the chase, the A's are set to take on the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), in large part due to the heroics of a small-stature one-time backup infielder Marco Scutaro. After connecting for run-scoring doubles in all three games against the Minnesota Twins, Marco came up huge with a bases-clearing double that gave the A's an 8-2 margin in the final contest, amid deafening chants of "Marco! Scutaro!" from the feverishly-adoring crowd.

Though loved by many hard-core A's fans well before the series, Marco's MVP-like show has the baseball world buzzing, and the Internet awash in those searching for all they can about this unknown Venezuelan. How do I know? It just so happens that louisgray.com has seen quite a bit of activity looking for Marco. In March of this year, in a pre-season edition of the ANtics, I profiled Marco in "Scutaro Skills!". This comic has risen in the ranks of Google images, sticking out like a sore thumb from the rest of the standard game photography. Of these visitors to the site, a great number are from Marco's homeland in Venezuela.

So, if you've come to louisgray.com looking for more about the little man who has come up big, you can find your Marco fix here:

ANtics Episode 2.5: "Scutaro Skills"
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Marco In a Less-Dignified Pose
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Athletics Nation: "Venezuelan Man Candy"

Listening to ''Love Is Blind'', by 4 Strings (Play Count: 11)

Every once in a while, one of those wacky acquisition rumors just happens to be true. In a flashback to the 1999 .com heyday, search giant Google purchased online video outlet YouTube in a deal worth more than $1.6 billion in an all-stock transaction. As with those 1999-era deals, in contrast to most M&A activity, Google's stock rose sharply after-hours. Also similar to that rosy era, Google chose not to disclose how they arrived at such a lofty valuation for the company, whose revenue and profits are so far a mystery.

I wrote earlier that Google would potentially hesitate at the deal due to the tremendous amount of copyrighted material hosted by YouTube. Though the site is the leading platform for amateur video, it also hosts a ridiculous number of materials owned by major media outlets, who have made noise about enforcing their copyrights. Now that Google has acquired YouTube, they've gained more than a superstar Web 2.0 company, they've also acquired the potential for a string of lawsuits unlike anything seen outside of the  litigation-happy pharmaceutical industry.

Clearly, my concerns weren't shared by all in Mountain View. VentureBeat contributor Steve Poland said that while the prospects for litigation were high, that Google "has significant interest in this battle, as it will set a legal precedent and have significant effects on their future plans …" The company already has raised the ire of copyright holders for its far-reaching book archiving and search projects, and Google has said it wants to organize all of the world's information, regardless of its source, and that video is part of that information repository.

On Google's analyst call following the acquisition this afternoon, CEO Eric Schmidt said YouTube's ad network is remarkably similar to that of Google, and that it doesn't threaten the future of Google Video, which has gotten off to a very slow start.

The deal isn't without its detractors. Dallas Mavericks owner and part-time billionaire blogger Mark Cuban sticks to his guns saying that "Google is crazy". Of course, it could be just as easily argued that Yahoo! was crazy when they purchased his Broadcast.com, making him scads of cash. Maybe it's the fact the deal's hit so close to home that has him in a snit.

Google has made several under the radar acquisitions of small companies. Some, like Keyhole, have turned into applications, like Google Earth. Still others have been grabs for intellectual programmers with interesting ideas. As John Battelle writes, this will be Google's first big brand acquisition, and the first challenge to the Google brand, as the two companies try to remain separate but synergistic.

I'm somewhat on the sidelines for this deal. I have never posted a video to YouTube, and don't even own a video camera. However, I really like the ease of use the site offers, especially for framing videos to other blogs. The real-time comment system and related videos are similarly top-notch. I don't know that this is the type of deal that will make Google an even bigger force to be reckoned with, but at the very least it puts them light years ahead of Yahoo! and Microsoft in this battle that is surely just heating up.

Listening to ''Moonface - Futurised Fears'', by Bedrock (Play Count: 7)

In a single-person survey conducted in the Louis Gray household this evening, it was determined that ongoing issues with the blog's look and feel have directly impacted sleep patterns to the point of ridiculousness. Apparently, after an "all clear" note sent yesterday that highlighted the potential to ongoing changes, issues with the blog became only worse, and continued efforts to post new stories, or make changes, consumed efforts until after 3 in the morning, Pacific Time, before the site's administrator relented.

After coming home yesterday evening from the Cal and Oregon football game, which has pushed the team into Top Ten status in the college polls, I attempted to post my quick game recap, but for some reason, the new blog site theme opted to try and publish the nearly 500 posts to date, rather than just add the one. Multiple times, this failed part-way through, and it was impossible to publish at all. After this nonsense, I changed themes a few more times, and tweaked settings, all in vain.

With the beagle as my only companion, the wife long since asleep, we tried to make louisgray.com functional, and gave up in frustration before 4 a.m. came, in some attempt to rest before Sunday began in earnest. Yet, the post which should have made it to the Web at 12:45 last night didn't go live until almost noon today, when a "perfect storm" of settings, preferences and themes were found to meet the minimum standard needed. So, here we are. The site once again looks interesting, but once again, lacks the subpage content I had been so excited about the last time you were updated.

Be assured that we will keep fighting - sleep be damned.

Listening to ''Enemy'', by Gabriel & Dresden (Play Count: 12)

It would be hard to top the two sports-filled days we enjoyed Friday and Saturday. After seeing the A's sweep the Twins and clinch an ALCS berth Friday, we turned right around and headed up the 880 freeway to see the #16 ranked California Golden Bears take on the #11 ranked Oregon Ducks in a game that had both conference and national rankings implications. When the contest had concluded, and the sellout crowd of nearly 73,000 had made their way out of Memorial Stadium, the Bears emerged victorious by a lopsided score of 45-24, keeping the team unbeaten in conference play, and serving notice that their week one failures at Tennessee were a fluke.

Cal scored early and often against the Ducks, seemingly from the very first snap. The first series Oregon ran on offense turned into an interception for the Bears, who scored a touchdown shortly afterwards. Similarly, the first possession in the second quarter saw an errant pass from the Ducks land in the Bears' hands. On another chance, the Bears returned a punt from well beyond mid-field for a score, as the team rallied ahead their higher-ranked opponents by the tune of 28-3.

Oregon's offense simply could not get on track. Their only touchdown before halftime, making it 28-10, came on a faked field goal try that landed them near the end zone. In the second half, it was more of the same, as Cal added on, scoring 10 in the third quarter, and breaking up the Ducks' rhythm throughout. The only concerns on the game were the occasional sloppy penalty picked up by an overexcited Cal Bear, and the injury suffered by Heisman hopeful Marshawn Lynch, who exited the game for good in the second quarter following an injury. Yet, even in his absence, Cal kept the pressure on, as backup rusher Justin Forsett tallied on more than 100 yards in relief.

With the victory, the Bears are certain to advance in the national polls. How high depends on how many other Top 25 schools went down to defeat, and how the myriad of writers and coaches around the country interpreted the win. After coming into the season with very lofty expectations, only to have them dashed at the hands of the Volunteers, the Bears have an uphill climb to change the hearts and minds of the people. Luckily for them, my wife and I are already converted. 

Listening to ''Marrakech (A and T Remix)'', by ATB (Play Count: 17)