Idle Thoughts, while waiting for a UConn hoops, Blake Snell to pitch into the sixth inning and for college football fans in the south to mix in a mask:

• Dr. Idle, Dr. I to his close friends, wonders: How many career no-hitters would Nolan Ryan have if he pitched for the Rays?

Guessing a 23-year-old Cornell grad watching from afar would have hyperventilated at the dreaded "third time through the order" thing and sent word down to yank Ryan faster than a decaying tooth.

But then, would the Rays have allowed Tolstoy to finish "War and Peace" or summoned Dostoevsky by page 365?

• Mad props and bon mots to D.J. Camilucci, who was doing public address at the Waterford soccer game the other day.

She introduced starting lineups with player numbers preceding their names. Until the player who wore "zero." She made the distinction that "zero" is not a number, referring to it as "zero" and not "number zero."

Is zero a number? Dr. I doesn't care. It's math. Dr. I hates math. But on the subject of public address, there is one (and only one) gold standard: the late, great Bob Sheppard, the ethereal voice of Yankee Stadium for 56 years.

Bob believed zero was not a number. He introduced Derek Jeter, for example, as "numbuh 2, Derek Jee-tuh" but Al Oliver (who wore zero for the Rangers) as "designated hitter, zero, Al Oliver."

So there.

(And please, if the urge to comment flies at a few math-heads here, Dr. I hopes they duck. This is about public address not integers.)

• If Bo Derek married former boxer Riddick Bowe and then divorced him for South Carolina offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, that would make her Bo Bowe Bobo. (This is what happens when your mind wanders at 3 a.m.)

• Dr. I sees that the World Series produced an average of 9.785 million viewers per game, making it the least-watched World Series on record.

New age baseball: death by a thousand cuts.

• Is it too much to ask Evan Engram to dive?

• Not getting the Daniel Jones hate.

Or the comparisons to Kyler Murray.

Murray gets to throw to DeAndre Hopkins.

Jones gets to throw to Anthony Hopkins.

• And by the way: Anyone who thinks Trevor Lawrence would do any better here should go watch baseball.

Lawrence would get the spit kicked out of him just as Jones is — until the Giants replace the five turnstiles in front of him with actual NFL linemen.

If the Giants get the No. 1 pick, they should mimic what the Cowboys did with Herschel Walker and trade it for a busload of draft choices.

Of course, Gettleman might screw those up, too. But we can hope.

• Congrats to the kids, coaches and administrators within the ECC for making the 7 on 7 thing work.

Amazing what happens when people value cooperation over complaining.

• Biden by two touchdowns; Formica by a late field goal.

• Belated congrats here to Waterford High's Maddie Burrows, who will continue her softball career at Villanova. Great school.

Dr. I's favorite campuses from past UConn road trips: 1. Stanford; 2. UCLA; 3. Nova. 4. Georgetown (Jawdgetown, as Jim Calhoun says).

• Great to see Matt Forde the other day. Matt is assisting Jay Wolfradt coaching soccer at Fitch High.

Matt is a true soccer guy. He does not endorse Dr. I's four easy steps to making soccer more popular:

TV timeouts, four quarters, bigger goals and no offside.

• It didn't take Cheating A.J. Hinch long to get another job. Sad.

• Dr. I is the first (well, maybe the fifth) to admit when he's wrong.

He has extoled the virtues of YouTube TV in previous discourses.

And then he gets an e-mail Friday saying YouTube TV is dumping NESN. It has neither YES nor NESN now.

Don't really care about missing baseball. But NESN shows a lot of college sports. So we shop around. Again. Dr. I's household goes through providers the way the Rays go through relievers. Sigh.

• Dear Clemson: You're welcome. Now clean it up for next week. We need you.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro