Major League Update

I used to write sports. When I was in college at the University at Albany, I wrote articles about the college hockey team. It was a pretty good team, Division III. I used to sit rink side watch all the action and then go back to my room and type out my article on my Smith-Corona word processing typewriter. For road games, a member of the team would bring me home the score sheets so I could recreate the game for the readers.

I say this because my performance in recapping the past seem to be a hell of a lot better than my predicting sports future. Let us briefly recap my predictions for the respective Championship series:

• Mets in five
• Athletics in seven

So, how we doin'? Well, the Athletics got swept aside in four games by the Detroit Tigers. One of the first casualties came today when the Oakland manager, Ken Macha, was relieved of his duties. So the Tigers get to sit in wait in Detroit for the start of the World Series on Saturday. Detroit will be in the Series as a wild-card team, marking the fifth year in a row the wild card team has made it to the World Series. Why the Series starts in Detroit you ask? Thanks, Bud Selig, for his "rule change" that made the All-Star game "mean something" (i.e., home field advantage for the winning league).

Over on the National League field, the Mets jumped out to an impressive game one victory, a game that took place a day after the tragic death of Yankee pitcher (and former Met, along with many other teams) Cory Lidle. The Cardinals then came back with two impressive victories to lead the series 2-1. Last night, the Mets struck back, hard, routing the Cards and knotting the series at two games a piece. Game 5, scheduled for tonight, has been postponed by rain (as was Game 1) and will be played tomorrow. Although I said Mets in 4, they've played 4 and I say its anybody's series.

In other baseball coaching news, the Chicago Cubs have announced the Lou Pinella will coach the club next year, replacing the fired Dusty Baker. Pinella is currently one of the commentators on the Fox television broadcasts. That still leaves the top spot here in Washington, although Joe Girardi is evidently been sniffing around that job as well, along with Baker. Now with Oakland looking for a new skipper, and Alou out in San Francisco, there are a number of vacancies in the West, with several here in the East. And again, my prediction that Joe Torre would be out? Even George Steinbrenner let me down.