One big change when producing sports copy on scheduled days for a newspaper in recent times is that the bosses would like to have your plan several days in advance. There will always be big events and breaking news, but there are times when the topic is not as clear-cut.

When asked about those days well in advance, my favored response for several decades, "God will provide," will not cut it in the third decade of an amazing century that includes a new monster called AI champing at the bit.

Planning.

Which brings us to this offering, which was planned to be, "What has happened to big-league baseball that the World Series, formerly a national obsession, has been reduced to humiliations?"

Such as: bragging that Game 3 between the storied teams from North America's largest cities, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees, was able to produce slightly more viewers (over all "platforms") than a nothing "Monday Night Football" game matching the lousy New York Giants and the boring Pittsburgh Steelers.

These were among the theories on the MLB's decline:

BILL KOSTROUN
Red Sox players celebrate their victory over the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2004 American League Championship Series. Boston became the first (and thus far only) MLB team to win a seven-game series after losing the first three games.

• Big picture: Baseball became slower and slower (to the point a pitch clock was required) while society — the world, really — was moving faster and faster.

• Endless pitchers throwing at higher speeds, with greater varieties of pitches, made better in astounding ways (they show 'em their skeletal movements), and with one main goal: Keep the ball out of the middle of the plate, where a hitter will wait four or five pitches without a hack in the hope of seeing one there.

• All leading to Problem A: The ball is not in play. Plays in football have a result. Possessions in basketball have a result. Hockey has speed on its side. Soccer — OK, I got nothing. But big-league baseball … pitch after pitch without any action.

• Other sports build momentum in the playoffs. Baseball plays 162 games in the regular season, creating the attitude, "Let's get a winner; winter's coming." It was iffy if we needed three rounds of playoffs. We certainly don't need 3⅔ rounds.

• Plus, how many days and nights can you expect people to stand and wave a piece of fabric every time a visiting batter gets two strikes on him?

Terrie Robbins is a fine person, spouse of a great sports editor in Arnie Robbins, but what she wrought with the Homer Hanky in 1987 did lead to this towel-waving plague on today's postseason baseball.

This was going to be it: a jaundiced view of big-league baseball, and particularly the postseason.

And then I made a mistake. On Halloween night, after the tricksters had wiped us out, it was decided to take a glance at "The Comeback" on Netflix. It's a three-parter on the 2004 Red Sox — the first (and only) team to come back from down 3-0 in a baseball series and the first Red Sox team to win a World Series in 86 years.

Colin Barnicle, a son of infamous Boston Globe news side columnist Mike Barnicle, was the director and executive producer. Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy told me he was interviewed in January, so these are fresh perspectives on those fabulous events.

Barnicle starts with 2003, when the Red Sox blew a 5-0 lead in Game 7 of the ALCS in Yankee Stadium and lost 6-5 on Aaron Boone's home run in the 11th inning.

I was covering that one and was among the millions wondering why manager Grady Little still had Pedro Martinez pitching in the eighth as he went past 120 pitches.

Little was fired soon thereafter and offers a low-key, entertaining interview in the documentary, including this, concerning the Game 7 loss: "If there was an election between me and Osama bin Laden, I was not going to win."

Then came '04, with the Red Sox only above average until early August, when they traded fading shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and brought in Orlando Cabrera to make the shortstop plays at the trading deadline. Doug Mientkiewicz came in from the Twins on the same day to provide fielding excellence at first base when required.

There's also much on David Ortiz, with his astounding "Big Papi" heroics in '04 — again bringing into question the Twins releasing him in December 2002, even though it did give them the roster opening to take infielder Jose Morban in the Rule 5 draft.

One notable moment: Joe West took heat in his later years of umpiring, but he was the plate ump and caught cheating Alex Rodriguez's karate chop to knock a ball loose on the way to first base. No replay then, and if not for Joe's eagle eyes, "The Comeback" might never have occurred.

I watched it in one swoop, and this is how good it was:

Those three hours reminded me that I do love baseball.