You Can't Script October!

And FOX can't come up with a new slogan for the major baseball league playoffs each year!

That's okay. I might seriously watch the ALCS and the World Series this year with the mute button on and some old school hip hop blaring out of my portable i-pod dock. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are generally intolerable even for short periods of time. Three-and-a-half hours at a clip? My God. I'd rather listen to Krusty the Clown and Homer Simpson do play by play and color commentary in the baseball playoffs. Hey wait a minute ... is this really a terrible idea? What's the downside? That you'd be laughing your ass off every five minutes?

"It must be a homer, Simpson, because the pitcher's saying 'DOH!' "

Okay, thanks for indulging me.

Kiddies, the ALCS and NLCS are set. I would have fired up a lightning-fast entry last night considering that the Phillies squeezed past the Rockies in the NL Divisional Series with an extremely uncomfortable 5-4 win in Game 4, but I could barely keep my eyes open through the last out thanks to the fact that Game 3 didn't end until after 2 a.m. East Coast time the night before (well ... technically, the 'morning of.'). Combine that with the fact that I had to drag my sorry ass into work on Monday, Columbus Day mind you, when most of the working world was chilling out at home, and that I was feeling like someone was trying to pull my eyelids down every other 10 minutes, and you can probably understand why I was cursing any and everything having to do with the fact that a frigging playoff game can't end at a reasonable hour.

Okay, back to the lecture at hand (as Snoop Dogg might say).

We've got Yankees-Angels and Phillies-Dodgers. No matter what happens, we'll get a fairly intriguing World Series. Predictions seem insane in this day and age, so I won't even try. I mean, consider that in this decade alone, we've had the following:

* Two teams win the World Series for the first time since the 19-teens (Boston, Chi Sox)

* An extremely mediocre regular season team defy the odds in the playoffs and win the whole she-bang (Sl. Louis in '06);

* A from-almost-nowhere-to-the-World-Series experience (Tampa Bay making it last year after expectedly sucking the year before, and pretty much every other year before that one);

* The usually hopelessly inept Phillies winning their first world championship in 28 years, and only second overall, removing at least a little bit of the sting of being the statistically losing-est franchise in all of professional sports;

* And maybe last but definitely not least, we witnessed a team with a 3-0 series lead in the ALCS completely evaporate under the pressure and lose that series 4-3, for the first time in best-of-seven baseball playoff history. Oh yeah, and the team that improbably blew that lead? The New York effin' Yankees, only the WINNING-est franchise in all of professional sports (at least as it applies to most number of titles won).

After all that, I'm thinking all bets are off the table. I can believe and foresee anything in this day and age.

Oh and the black mark that steroids has left on the game? Yeah, we're not talking about it as much these days, but don't think for one second it might not still be lingering. Once again, I'll believe anything.

Having said all that, if I had to say what I think is likely to happen, well, okay.

And this is NOT the reverse jinx theory at work here, but I don't think the Phillies have the same swagger they did last year. Brad Lidge of 2009 is not Brad Lidge of 2008, but this team still has some considerable skills at the plate and on defense. If we're going strictly by what happened in the first round, the Dodgers simply looked better, and did so against a stronger opponent (Cardinals) than that which faced the Phillies (Rockies). To examine it that way, and bearing in mind that L.A. has the home field advantage, I'm thinking the Dodgers are going to exact revenge from last year and come out on top this time. I'd love to be wrong, just for the record.

In the AL, well of course everyone is expecting the Bronx Bombers to make it through. They're the fashionable pick. They have all the history on their side, all the tradition, the highest payroll, the most playoff experience, the highest payroll, the most devoted fans, and the highest payroll.

Did I mention that their players make a lot of money? Oh I'm sorry. I tried to get that across, I really did.

Seriously, the Yanks deserve the accolades right now. They genuinely seem to be enjoying the ride, but the Angels really have it cooking right now also. I'm still saying Yanks, but I could easily see that series going 6 or 7 games. I think the Dodgers will get it done in 6 or fewer though.

Get ready for some brutally long playoff games and a whole ton of unattractive HD close-ups of old-manager nose hair and other such atrocities that shouldn't be shown on a 52-inch screen plastered across your living room wall.

Enjoy!