Playoff Baseball

A few words about the 2009 Major Baseball League playoffs.

*   Yankees lead the Angels 2-0 going back to Anaheim for Games 3 and 4 (and game 5 if the Angels are lucky), and if there's ever been a 'team of destiny', it would be hard to argue that the '09 Bronx Bombers are it. What's most impressive is perhaps that the Yanks are winning these nail-biters as well as the more lopsided decisions (see Game 2 in the ALDS against Minnesota, and Game 2 against the Angels Saturday night, a 13-inning, five-hour marathon).

     Furthermore, A-Rod is no longer clumsy, bumbling and failing to produce in October. I'm almost not sure that it's even still him out there. Somebody may have replaced him with an A-Rod lookalike who's too dumb to feel the pressure. But seriously, it's nice for once to see A-Rod just performing and not having his every second micro-dissected by the fans and New York media. There's so many personalities and household names on this Yankee team that nobody cares about killing Alex anymore.

     It seemed like a foregone conclusion that this was going to be a tight series, and now it's not even a given that the Angels will win a game. Going from the arctic October New York weather to sunny Anaheim will be a picnic for both teams no doubt, and the Angels will be in more comfortable confines, but it's almost like the pressure is off for the Yanks at this point. They can get swept out there and still come back to NY knowing they're not finished. That kind of loosey-goosey dynamic can be dangerous to have to overcome. Anything is possible, but I'm thinking just put New York in the World Series. Pencil them in. You can erase pencil anyway.

*   The NLCS is basically the opposite of the ALCS, which is to say, there's no telling what in the name of sweet Moses is going to happen. The Phillies showed grit and gutsiness in holding off the 'not-going-away' L.A. Dodgers in Game 1, hanging on for an 8-6 win. Then in Game 2, the Phils collapsed, highlighted by Chase Utley's throwing error late in the game, as the Dodgers hung on for the 2-1 victory.

    I can't foresee any scenario in which all the rest of the games in this series don't unfold this way. I literally feel like you need a surface distraction going on when watching your team in a playoff baseball series. Tension mounts with each pitch, knowing that it's truly not over until the last pitch. Every play can bring either unbridled joy and excitement, or crushing defeat and sadness. It's just not right. There's no clock to make you feel better about having a big lead, and there are few situations where you can feel good about how it's going to turn out, unless you're up by about 8 or 9 runs (even then nothing is guaranteed).

    Every now and then, your team gets lucky with a series where it's clear that the opposition is just overmatched and needs an uncanny combination of luck and circumstance to come out on top. But with this series, there's no reason why the Phillies can't go down in a ball of flames. It's good times, all around. A cold, rainy Citizen's Bank Park will be the site of Games 3-5 (or at least it will be cold and rainy for tonight's Game 3). Cliff Lee will take the mound against Hiroki Kuroda. And I'll be channel-flipping and checking my fantasy football live scoring updates about 20 times a minute so that I don't have to watch every agonizing second.

Oh and for the record, I think we're headed for a Yanks-Dodgers World Series. I hate to sound like I'm not behind my team, but one World Series title doesn't erase all the ineptitude for which the Phillies are so belovedly (or NOT belovedly) known. I'm not sure if 'belovedly' is even a word by the way, but you get the idea.