So, what do you think?
We’ve changed our stripes this week. Out with the cnylink nonsense, in with the web sites specifically tailored to each of the communities we cover. Not to sound like a movie trailer or anything, but the reviews we’ve received, scattered though they may be, are quite nice. So keep on reading…and please comment, anywhere and everywhere. This is, after all, your news, and your stories that we try to cover, and feedback is crucial so that we can listen, adapt and get better. Barely a week (and another web site) ago, I sat in this spot and looked at the first round of the playoffs. Some things turned out very predictable – the Yankees sweep, the Phillies sweep. Others, not so much. For starters, did Minnesota even show up? Talk about laying down after Game 1. At least the Rays fought back from 0-2 and behind in the eighth inning of Game 3, taking it all the way to the wire before Cliff Lee did his October thing again. Now Tampa Bay will have no choice but to break up, and fans will actually have a reason to stay away from those catwalk-infested catacombs in St. Pete. And how about this – the first Rangers series win in 50 years of existence, dating back to D.C. The franchise where Frank Howard hit them deep, Ted Williams “managed”, George W. Bush owned, Nolan Ryan threw in his 40s and many, from Jeff Burroughs to Al Oliver to Buddy Bell to Ruben Sierra to Pudge Rodriguez to Juan Gonzalez to some guys named A-Rod and Teixiera, hit it hard but never won anything more than a few division titles, is out of the darkness. Credit, too, to San Francisco and Atlanta for staging a four-game nail-biter where every contest got decided by a single run. Somewhere in that series, I turned into a serious Giants fan, because those folks by the Bay have waited 52 long years to win it all and have got exactly three World Series for their troubles. And what happened? McCovey didn’t hit the ball three feet higher in 1962. An earthquake in 1989. The Angels coming back in 2002. Not to mention decades of freezing night games at Candlestick Park. In July. I’m not kidding. Yet everything in the Division Series, including the misfortunes of Brooks Conrad, paled next to what Roy Halladay did to the Reds the first time he stepped to the mound in a meaningful October game. Twenty-eight up, one walk, the other 27 down, nearly perfect, the only no-hitter in the post-season ever thrown by a dude not named Don Larsen. Simply stunning. And now comes the NLCS, and a Game 1 mound match-up for the ages between Halladay and Tim Lincecum, the Freak who made the Braves look absolutely stupid in his 14-K, two-hit gem that included several strike threes swung at in the dirt. Forget strategy – everyone has to see these guys go at it Saturday night. It might take 12 innings for someone to score a run. Seriously. What of the rest of the series, though? San Francisco has arms every bit as good as the Halladay-Roy Oswalt-Cole Hamels trio (H20, if you please), so it all comes down to which side comes up with the timely hits and stays patient through what is sure to be a lot of goose eggs. Philly has more firepower at the plate, but we haven’t seen it unleashed yet. If it does, the Phillies take this in six, or less, and become the first NL team in nearly seven decades, since the 1942-44 Cardinals, to grab three straight pennants. The Yankees own 40 pennants, and many have already chalked up no. 41 to them before they even step on the diamond in Arlington Friday night. I mean, really, how can the Rangers, who have NEVER been here before, possibly handle the Aura, the Mystique, all those thousands of winning qualities of pinstripers that have been drummed into our heads for time immemorial? Simple, really – the Rangers just HAVE to win one of those first two games, or it will be over fast. Get a split, and you get the Mighty Cliff Lee in the Stadium in the Bronx for Game 3, and a real chance to move ahead and assure that, one way or another, the series ends in Texas. All the pressure is on New York. They’re supposed to win, and can’t even tolerate the “or else” part. So it could end up Yankees-Phillies, again, in the Closer to Winter Than Fall Classic. Or maybe one of the upstarts belies its history and crashes the World Series, making Fox executives squirm – or just make more RNC donations to make sure that sort of accident never happens again. Either way, you couldn’t get four more different places. New York, center of everything, with a rather inflated view of itself. Philadelphia, passionate, crass and cynical, but maybe warming up to this whole dynasty concept. Texas, big and brash, disdainful of anything that isn’t Texan. San Francisco, always ahead of the national curve, with natural beauty to back it all up. They all do their own things. Two of them will have pennants a week and a half from now.