Steve Perry sings Don't Stop Believin' at Giants game ... in the crowd!

So the San Francisco Giants, as sports teams are wont to do these days, were playing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" during a break in Game 5 of the NLCS. Nothing unusual here, right?

Right. That is, until the crowd noticed Steve Perry -- Journey's former lead singer, who co-wrote "Don't Stop Believin'." And he was rockin' out, singing along to every word he penned 30 years ago!

Check out this video of Steve Perry singing "Don't Stop Believin'" during the Giants game at AT&T Park in San Francisco (the camera first captures him around the 46-second mark):



And one last thing: Steve, I know you're not in the band anymore, and you've been branded a recluse by many, but you must have pretty sizable royalty checks rolling in still. You couldn't afford better seats?

Why expanding the baseball playoffs is a bad idea

"More is better." It's the misguided motto of American sports.

The NHL pretty much relegated itself to second-tier status over the past 20 years by expanding from 21 to 30 teams -- a 42% increase! The growth left the majority of teams full of no-names, playing in half-empty stadiums in hockey hotbeds such as Phoenix and Columbus. More was not better.

The NFL wants to expand its regular season to 18 games, even though it's getting harder and harder for players to make it through the current 16-game schedule without getting injured. More will not be better.

And now Major League Baseball is throwing around the idea of expanding its playoffs -- one of the few remnants of a simpler sporting world gone by.

Syracuse No. 29? You're kidding, right?

I'm not much of a reader. I subscribe to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, but I'm way behind. Like, I just finished reading the July 19 New Yorker, which had an article on David Ortiz's early-season struggles. (It was kind of funny to read in retrospect, since he finished with 32 homers, 102 RBI and a .270 average.) And I have three books I got for Christmas that I haven't even opened yet.

Anyway, one new book that I do want to read soon is "Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series," by Yahoo! Sports reporters Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan, a Syracuse classmate of mine. I mention the Syracuse connection not as a gratuitous name-drop -- OK, maybe a little -- but as a way to finally get to the point of this post:

The fallout from Syracuse's upset over West Virginia shows that death to the BCS would be a very good thing indeed.

The world's most overrated tourist destinations

I've been fortunate enough to see a lot of the world's great tourist destinations in my 30 years. I've stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon, looked across the Tri-State Area from atop the World Trade Center, and just last week rode across London's Tower Bridge on a double-decker bus.

But I've also come across some tourist destinations that fail to live up to their hype -- like if the Grand Canyon were just a muddy creek you could skip a stone across. These are the tourist destinations that make you say "that's it?" instead of "that's amazing!" Here are some to avoid on your next vacation:

Randy Moss trade: Debunking the defenders

The Randy Moss trade to the Vikings is official, and I am not pleased.

Instead of going on a huge rant about why this is a terrible deal that benefits the Patriots in no way and will come back to bite them when they play the Vikings on Halloween, adding another "bridge year" on to the one Red Sox fans just suffered through and ensuring that New England's rebuilding process will continue for the foreseeable future, I will calmly debunk the reasons that some fans and observers think the Randy Moss trade is a good one:

"In Bill we trust." This tired phrase hasn't been applicable since 2007. Really, you completely, 100%, blindly trust the guy who went for it on fourth down from his own 24 yard line, with the lead, in the fourth quarter, against an undefeated team, on the road? You trust the guy who doesn't have an offensive or defensive coordinator on his staff?

Bill Belichick is not a God. He doesn't even have his face on a coin. He makes decisions that don't always work out. Add the Randy Moss trade to that list.

"If he doesn't want to be here, I don't want him here." This point is fair enough, especially given reports that Moss made a stink after Monday's victory (in which he had zero catches). Not wanting to be here is one thing, but causing distractions is different.

This argument leaves out one crucial element, however: Randy Moss is one of the best wide receivers in football, and the Patriots only got a third-round pick in exchange for him. Yes, the Pats got him for a fourth-round pick in 2007, but that was from the Raiders, and they're not exactly the most well-managed team in the league. (For example, 2007 was the year they drafted JaMarcus Russell.)

Just the other day, the Seahawks gave up a fourth-round pick and at least a sixth-round pick for Marshawn Lynch, the Bills' underachieving running back. Under the right conditions, you could trade a fourth-rounder and a sixth-rounder for a third-rounder. So, by the Transitive Property of the Randy Moss Trade Sucks, the Patriots are saying they value Moss as much as the Bills valued Marshawn Lynch. Awesome.

"The Patriots now have two picks in each of the first four rounds of the 2011 draft." Whoop-dee-frickin'-doo. Sure, the 2010 draft class looks promising, but here are some names the Pats have picked in the first four rounds since 2007: Tyrone McKenzie (on practice squad), Rich Ohrnberger (just called up from practice squad), Kevin O'Connell (cut a year after being drafted) and Kareem Brown (cut less than a year after being drafted). Underwhelming names like Shawn Crable and Jonathan Wilhite are also on that list.

Based on prior results, the Patriots just traded Randy Moss for someone of that ilk. Still feel good about the deal?

Top Boston sports coach: Doc Rivers? Really?

The Boston Globe's Chris Gasper ranked the top Boston sports coaches on his blog the other day, and he named the Celtics' Doc Rivers No. 1.

Red Sox skipper Terry Francona was No. 2, the Patriots' Bill Belichick was No. 3, and Claude Julien of the Bruins was a deservedly distant fourth. You can debate Francona vs. Belichick all day long, depending on whether you value personnel management or on-field strategy more. But Doc Rivers shouldn't even be in that discussion.

Why did Gasper name Rivers the top Boston sports coach? Because he "somehow managed to coax an aging, disengaged, fourth-seeded team to within six minutes of an NBA title last season." Well, that's one way to look at it. You could also argued that he let a very talented team become disengaged and led them to a disappointing fourth-place finish before finally getting them to live up to their potential in the playoffs.

All the players love Doc, but his job the last three years hasn't exactly been the most challenging. He has three hall of famers and one of the league's best point guards. I'm not saying anything new here, but going to two finals and winning a championship with a stacked team doesn't mean you're an outstanding coach. It just means you don't suck.

Compare that to Francona, who lost most of his best players for significant periods of time this season and had to make Darnell McDonald, Daniel Nava and Ryan Kalish regular starters -- and still led the Sox to the fifth-best record in the American League. I doubt Rivers would be able to post similar results with such a dearth of talent.