Chicago ? There are 30 baseball teams. Each plays 162 games. That means there are thousands of games per season.

I could not care less if I get to see most of these games on TV.

But then there is a little something we know as the postseason.

Only eight teams make it. Each plays a minimum of three games, a maximum of 19.

And I want to see them all.

It does not seem a lot to ask. After a month or more of spring training, followed by six months and thousands of games, I believe myself to be a typical American baseball fan who expects to be able to turn on a TV and watch each and every October postseason game.

I do not want anybody deciding for me if I get to see Yankees vs. Red Sox or if I get to see Cardinals vs. Astros.

I expect to see them both.

Is that asking a lot? To see two baseball games?

Nevertheless, lo and behold, what did I find in my TV listings for Wednesday night?

7 p.m. CDT (Fox Sports Net): Cardinals vs. Astros.

7 p.m. CDT (Fox): Yankees vs. Red Sox.

Because the geniuses who bring you Major League Baseball could not bring themselves to schedule the two baseball games at two different times.

They couldn’t begin one game at 5 p.m. and the other at 8.

No, they had to begin both of these 2004 playoff contests simultaneously.

So if I wanted to watch both — and I did — I had the following options:

I could unplug one of my TVs at home and stack it atop my other TV, aiming my “mute” button at whichever game had cut to a commercial.

Or, I could use my really cool “Picture in Picture” feature to watch two shows at once, if I could just find my TV’s manual to find out how “Picture in Picture” works.

Or, I could go to a bar, find a stool at the midpoint of a TV on my left (Yankees vs. Red Sox) and a TV on my right (Cardinals vs. Red Sox), tell everybody else at the bar to shut up so I can hear, ask the bartender to turn up the volume on one TV and down on the other, then stagger my way home after 31/2 hours of swallowing 31/2 beers, a basket of buffalo wings and the guy on the next stool’s cigarette smoke.

Ah, the romance of baseball.

But wait. It gets worse.

I don’t know about you, but there are a few million Americans out there who have a big interest this October in one thing other than baseball.

It is a little contest called Bush vs. Kerry that one or two people on the East Coast believe to be even bigger than Yankees vs. Red Sox.

So when was the last great debate between these two scheduled?

Directly opposite the baseball!

For a guy like me, this changed my options even more.

I could stack my 17-inch TV atop my 28-inch TV atop my 42-inch TV.

Or, I could dig out that manual, if I could find it, to see if my TV’s features happened to include “Picture in Picture in Picture.”

Or, I could go to a bar, watch baseball for an hour, ask the bartender to change channels to the debate around the fourth inning, then sit there and be mocked by drunks who say, “Hey, this jerk here wants to watch the debate!”

Oh, well. Whichever guy wins the November election should see to it the scheduling of October baseball be brought up in the next State of the Union address.