Baseball LCS

Few quick thoughts to get things going:



1) I hate small-ball National League tactics, like the sac bunt. The Phillies have lived and died with the long ball and, but for the double-switch (which I love) necessitated by pitchers batting (which I adore, see Brett Myers in NLCS Game 2), the National League strategy issues are crap.

2) Tampa is not for real. Boston is simply not that good this year, and my nine-year old could hit Wakefield. Whoever comes out of the NL will win the World Series.

3) The Phillies are nuts-good. Team of destiny. Bullpenalicious. I like this team even better than the '93 group. They are the San Antonio Spurs of baseball, minus the furners. Interesting thought...which team in baseball had the fewest foreign-born players on the roster at the start of this season? The Mets lead the league with 15 of the 25-man roster. The Phils had three, and picked up Canadian Matt Stairs midway through the season. Overall 28% of the MLB was born outside the 50 states (Dominican Republic dominates), while 47.8% of minor leaguers fall into that category. Not that this is necessarily a good thing, but by any right, the Phils can be called America's team. Feel free to jump on the bandwagon. Which brings us to...

4) Sid Rosenberg can fellate me. He was spewing off this morning about how awful a Philly v. Tampa WS was going to be, and then made it worse by calling Philly fans the worst in the country. While some notorious incidents (booing Santa, battery-laden snowballs, oh-so public bodily-fluid discharges in the 700-level, etc.) did go down at the Vet, for a guy in Miami to criticize Philly fans is not only ridiculous but slanderous. Marlins games get about 4,000 people when they are in the hunt in September. Rubbish.

He waxes poetic about NY fans, which is just worser crap. When the Rangers/Devils/Islanders are doing well (admittedly a rare happenstance) everyone from Hartford to Princeton is suddenly a huge fan of that team and when the Giants are doing well, the same is true of them. It must be nice having two (or more) teams for every sport, as you double the chances you will be able to front-run/bandwagon-jump, an art first perfected in the Tri-state area. For those who are combing their closets for red earmuffs or leg-warmers to don for tonight's game, look to our big brothers up I-95 for some of the real critical details on how to successfully front-run.

5) In Time magazine there was a stat that with the bailout you could buy every team in all four major sports (sorry AFL and NASCAR) and build them a new stadium. I like this better than the McDonalds apple pie comparison.

6) Sarah Palin dropped the puck the other day at the Flyers' game. One more reason to root for the Penguins.

Stay tuned tonight on FOX at 8:22 as your Phightin's lock up their first trip back to the Fall Classic since 1993. BTW, please chage the channel TO the game no earlier than 8:00 and turn away from FOX immediately after the last out. ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, PBS, Playboy, whatever. Just don't give Rupert any more ratings then you have to. If you have a satellite feed from the Dominican tune into I-Es-Pi-En en Español to avoid feeding the beast.

Back tomorrow.