the postseason

tonight is the start of the 2007 mlb playoffs. many of you aren’t baseball fans and don’t think that playoff baseball is any different. but it is. everything changes once the first 162 games are finished.

as an avid baseball fan, i can admit that there can be slow games, maybe even boring ones. not in the playoffs. something magical happens. the baseball gods sprinkle a healthy dose of excitement and energy down on the 8 diamonds fortunate enough to make in. i find moreso than in any other pro sport, the games enhances so much more come playoff time.

take for example the one game playoff between the rockies and padres monday night. two teams fighting for their playoff lives. the game had everything you could dream of: controversy, grand slams, extra innings, blown saves, back and forth lead changes, stolen season records, blown calls, late rallies, defensive blunders and when it was all said and done, you were riveted for 4 hours and 40 minutes and didn’t even know it.

this year’s crop of teams all look to be a gritty bunch who will be battling hard. you have the improbable rockies who had to win 13 of their last 14 games just to get into a tie-breaker situation, the yankess who battled back from 14 games down in the division to almost taking it (and i hate to say anything nice about the yanks), the phillies who hung in and toppled the mets (that was equally the mets fault, but philly still capitalized), the d-backs who seemingly came out of left field (pun intended) and the sweet lou’s cubs who turned it around from 2006 and scrapped with milwaukee all season for their division.

and here’s to a national league team winning it all