By John Hartley
j-hartley@onu.edu
Another spring, summer and fall of Major League Baseball is coming to an end. Now comes the fun part. I was actually pretty impressed with how little talk of steroids came up throughout the year. Maybe that’s because Mr. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were not present on any team. Well, no matter, the baseball season continued and thank goodness for that.
There were a couple firsts and a couple lasts this year. A first, instant replay was actually used to review a homerun to see whether it was, in fact, a homerun. Sure enough the ball, hit by the Yankee’s A-Rod, was a homerun. Also, Yankees fans bid farewell to Yankee Stadium, a stadium full of tradition, championships, and most of the American League All-Star team from 1998, oh yeah, that’s their current roster. Another first for the Yankees, this is the first time in the 21st century where they will not appear in October. Looks like Little Steinbrenner did just as well as his pops with managing the team. That leads me to my next topic.
Did you happen to see who was on top of the National League West? Yep, the Los Angeles Dodgers, led by whom? None other than former Yankees coach Joe Torre. But I mean hey, the Yankees had every reason to fire Torre, he never got them to the playoffs. Oops. And how about Manny Ramirez, basically taking himself out of the Red Sox organization and playing for the Dodgers like he did when he played for Cleveland. Sure, the guy still makes insane fielding errors, but at least he’s happy, not to mention he scored 50 RBI’s in both the National and American League this year.
So who else is in the hunt for October you might be asking? Well, let me tell you. In the National League it’s the Phillies, Dodgers, probably the Mets, and the Chicago Cubs. No it’s not a typo, I said the Cubs. Pending another Steve Bartman incident, I think the Cubs actually stand the best chance of going to the World Series in the National League.
For the American League, we find THE WORST division in all of baseball, the West Division. The Los Angeles Angels are on top of that, with the best record in baseball, sitting at 99 and 62 as of Saturday. They are trailed closely by the under 500 Texas Rangers, who are only behind 20 games with less than 3 to play in the season. At the bottom of that barrel lie the Seattle Mariners, a dreadful 60-101. Yikes. Okay, so it wasn’t THAT bad. I mean after all they were only behind 40 games. Also in the race for the year’s worst team were the Washington Nationals 59-101, and the Baltimore Orioles at 68-92. Maybe Cal Ripken Jr. needs to come out of retirement.
The other American League teams include Boston, Tampa Bay and (Chicago or Minnesota, you’ll have to look that one up). So overall my World Series prediction at this point (be sure to write this down and count on these teams to lose the first round of the playoffs, because I always have winning predictions pause NOT) goes like this. Chicago Cubs will beat the Los Angeles Angels in Game 6. That is of course unless the “Curse of the Goat” gets to the Cubbies, not that I believe in hokey curses. Cough, Rocky Colavito, cough, cough.