On Baseball

The weather today is cool, there's some rain around.  Hey, it's October.  And that means playoff baseball.

As most of my readers know, I grew up in New York and have been a lifelong New York Yankees fan.  When I moved to Washington, I soon fell hard for the new team that arrived here, the Washington Nationals.  I have been to opening day for each of the seasons the Nationals have had - and have rooted for them endlessly.  My friends often asked me what would happen if the Yankees and the Nationals met in the World Series - who would I root for?  My usual response was that I didn't have to think about that for awhile.

Until this year.

The Washington Nationals, the team with the best record in all of baseball, is playing its first playoff baseball game in its brief history.  The team they used to be, the Montreal Expos, were in the World Series in 1981, but that's long in the past.  There is playoff baseball in Washington DC for the first time since 1933.  The Washington Senators made it to the postseason three times, winning the World Series only once.

I can dream how this will all turn out.  I would love to see the Nationals go all the way - but I'm not sure it will happen.  The statistic that is getting a lot of airtime is that since the MLB went to the wild card format - the team with the best record in baseball has one the World Series only three times (I will point out that one of those was the New York Yankees).

Watch along with me and see what happens.  Here's my predictions on the divisional series:

NLDS #1 - Washington Nationals vs. the St. Louis Cardinals - Nationals in 4

NLDS #2 - Cincinnati Reds vs. the San Francisco Giants - Giants in 4

ALDS #1 - Oakland Athletics vs. the Detroit Tigers - well, as of this writing, the Tigers are heading to Oakland up 2 games to none - so unfortunately Moneyball is on the short end of the stick here - Tigers in 4.

ALDS #2 - New York Yankees vs. the Baltimore Orioles - the Orioles have played some amazing baseball this season, and I can see them getting past the Yankees here - but it's a tossup.  No bet.