Eight teams, one champion

All right, I’m glad we’ve opened up a little baseball dialogue. For the record, this postseason, for me, anyhow, is more about who I want to lose than who I want to win. Allow me to explain:

I hate, hate, hate with the fiery passion of a million suns the Houston Astros. The only way I could hate them more is if they signed Jim Edmonds to play center field. Suffice it to say, then, that I hope they lose in agonizing fashion. If they have to get to the World Series and blow it, well, so be it.

I don’t really have any feelings at all about the Braves. They pretty much just inspire boredom.

I never want to see St. Louis win, because I hate Cardinals fans rubbing success in my face, but San Diego is so overmatched in this series it would be a waste of time to root for them in the odd case I could find something likable about them, aside from the fact that Padre shortstop Khalil Greene is probably the only white kid from rural Pennsylvania ever to be named Khalil.

In the American League, I remember fondly the Angels of 2002, and some of the same faces are still around. Some of the newer faces actually came through Cedar Rapids, but not during the time I spent with the Kernels. The only one close is ace John Lackey )who started game seven in 2002 on his birthday) who was in CR for about a month the year I spent with the team, except it was the first month of the season and he’d been promoted before I showed up in June.

Then you have the Yankees and, well, you either love them or you hate them according to popular sports culture. I don’t really hate them, but I’d never root for them either. I couldn’t do it even when they lost to Florida in 2003.

I love last year’s Red Sox team, and the one from the year before. Without Pedro Martinez, however I thin some of the character is gone. Still, if pressed, they’d be my choice as favorite team in the postseason. And maybe the Cubs will find it in them to make a legitimate run at Johnny Damon during free agency this winter. I think they’d be better off going after Hideki Matsui to fill the hole in left field, but what do I know?

Anyhow, the Red Sox winning back-to-back series would have to be even more egg on the face of fans supporting a team that’s nearing a century of no-win baseball seasons.

Which brings us to the White Sox. I’m not so much a Sox hater, kind of like I don’t hate the Cardinals. I don’t want the team to do bad, but I do hope their fans end up in a vat of boiling oil. There’s no way for the Sox to win the Series and for the fans to not become even larger pompous assbags (apologies to my sister’s boyfriend, of course), so I can’t logically root for them, either.

At this point, I feel like Vezzini in "The Princess Bride"... "Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."

And so on and so forth. No matter what, I love playoff baseball, even if I can’t find a team to support. Following the postseason closely is a true joy for baseball nuts, and it’s why I look forward to every October. Three games in, I’m already hooked.