Six columns for the price of one.

If you're heading east on Division and get stuck in traffic between La Salle and Clark, you'll probably notice the large, flashing electronic sign on the west side of a building there that houses one of those "payday loan" currency exchanges.

Between advertisements for the currency exchange, another message appears every two minutes or so. It reads:

OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU

WALTER PAYTON

GET WELL

No doubt this oversight is unintentional, but this now-offensive and tasteless message needs to be deleted.

Today.

Given the cocaine questions about George W. Bush's distant past, his campaign team must have been screaming in anguish every time he did that nervous sniff-sniff-sniff thing during Tuesday night's debate.

As for the battle itself, it finally provided a distinct difference between the candidates.

Al Gore is a blandly handsome, middle-aged, white guy from a politically prominent family, in a conservative suit with a white shirt and a red tie.

George W. Bush is a blandly handsome, middle-aged, white guy from a politically prominent family, in a conservative suit with a white shirt and a red tie-with a pattern in it.

Jose Valentin was safe at second in the seventh inning Wednesday. He was safe. Why can't baseball have an instant replay rule?

More important, why did Frank Thomas pick this series to recapture that lunge-across-the-plate-while-bailing-out swing he used to such little effect in '98 and '99?

Sigh. In the meantime, I'd say the liveliest moment in the stands at Comiskey Park during Game One occurred when someone in the upper deck threw a Cubs jacket to the lower boxes down the third-base line. It was pounced upon by a couple of Sox fans who tried to light it on fire with their Bics.

The jacket was then thrown down to a fan who tried to tear it apart.

Finally, the crack security team arrived, confiscated the jacket and safely escorted it out of the ballpark, to boos.

If a Cubs coat came under that much fire, imagine what a Cubs fan might have to endure in such an environment.

For example, the kid sitting behind me who was wearing a Sammy Sosa T-shirt and a Yankees cap. By the seventh inning, he was reluctantly (but wisely) wearing a brand new Sox hat, courtesy of the guy who was sitting behind him.