Now that the non-waiver Trade Deadline has passed and one-third of the league's players have changed teams -- this is a rough estimate -- we can really settle into the pennant races.
Of course, those aren't the only battles taking place. We've also got some Baseball Writers' Association of America hardware on the line between now and Oct. 1, and the individual plot points associated with those honors can be entertaining as well.
Over the course of his 27-year career, Nolan Ryan won 324 games and struck out an all-time best 5,714 batters. It was presumably those feats of longevity and performance that made him a first-ballot Hall of Famer and placed him on a short list of the greatest pitchers of all time.