So how can you tell it’s a Saturday afternoon in September?

You walk into the Pirates clubhouse, and everyone is hunched over either their pad or phone following their college football team of choice. …

* * *

Rod Barajas was tracing something totally different on his phone: His kids’ soccer games in Southern California.

“Poor Stacie,” he said about his wife. “She’s got to take the kids to five different soccer games today.”

* * *

All this (warranted) consternation about possible scheduling nightmares in the event of end-of-season ties for playoffs spots has a touch of nostalgia for me. The main worry is that the already-tight postseason schedule would reach a breaking point if any tiebreakers have to be played.

It could result in all sorts of scheduling-travel nightmares since only one off-day is scheduled between the Oct. 3 end of the regular season and the Oct. 5 Wild Card one-game playoffs. People are wringing their hands over the possibility of, say, the Cardinals having to play at home on Wednesday, flying to Los Angeles to play the Dodgers in a Wild Card tiebreaker on Thursday and the winner of that game having to fly to Atlanta to play the Braves in the Wild Card playoff game on Friday.

Rough. But a whole media army tagged along with the Angels on just such an odyssey in 2005.

Here is how that happened:

• Oct. 8, New York: Game 4 of the Division Series between the Angels and the Yankees is rained out.
• Oct. 9, New York: Game 4 is played in prime time, and the Yankees win 3-2 tie knot the Series at 2-games each.
• Oct. 10, Anaheim: Afternoon Game 5, Angels win 5-3 to advance.
• Oct. 11, Chicago: Angels meet the White Sox in ALCS Game 1, and actually sleep-walk to a 3-2 win (then lose the next four).

Living out of a suitcase is one thing. Those three days, we all lived out of a straight-jacket.