Since columns are based upon the personal experience of the columnist writing the column, then I can safely say that this is the best time of the year!
This is the time not only when the weather gets colder and the leaves change color, but when the long season in Major League Baseball finally comes down to eight teams in the month of October, trying to all achieve the same objective they have had since the middle of February when pitchers and catchers arrived at Spring Training: a World Series championship.
Looking at the teams that have qualified for this year’s version of the postseason, we can see that some of them are perennial division winners like the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, and now even the Minnesota Twins who have won their third straight American League Central Division title. On the other hand, other teams have either not been in this coveted position for a number of years, or don’t make it here very often. An example is the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won their last championship in 1988 over the Oakland Athletics. They won the NL Wild Card in 1996, and promptly got swept by the eventual National League champion Braves. This is their first postseason appearance since then.
Then you have the teams that have made sporadic appearances since the inception of the three divisional system in 1994, such as the Houston Astros, Anaheim Angels, Boston Red Sox, and the St. Louis Cardinals along with baseball’s best record in 2004. Speaking of the Astros, they are trying to win their first postseason series in franchise history here in their seventh try. To do so, they’ll have to defeat the Braves. Atlanta has won 13 consecutive division championships, but only one world championship, another annual sub plot in October.
I’m sure that all of you are expecting a postseason preview with predictions of all series from the Wild Card round to the League Championship Series to the ultimate autumn showcase, the 2004 World Series. Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m smarter than that.
The way I see it, the best thing about the postseason in baseball is the fact that it’s completely unpredictable. It’s like a whole new, much shorter, much more important season right after the previous one ended.
One of the reasons that the postseason is something I would never bet on is pitching. Take, for instance, the League Division Series, a new best-of-five series which enabled four more teams on top of the original four that had been playing for the championship since 1969. A trend that has only recently become evident is the rotating of starting pitchers in a best-of-five series. If a certain team only has one or two effective starters, they can start them in games one and two, and again in games four and five. It does involve short rest (most times three or four days), but in October, it’s hard to find a pitcher who isn’t willing to stretch themselves so their team can get the eleven wins needed to experience baseball euphoria. They do, after all, have the entire winter to rest before they even have to throw a baseball again! For example, former Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling started games one, four, and seven of the 2001 World Series en route to knocking the New York Yankees off of their world championship pedestal.
In case you decided to skip the last paragraph for some odd wacked-out reason, starting pitching rotations can have major implications on the outcome of a postseason series. However, there is more to it than just defense. Many teams are carried by one player with a big bat. Those teams usually don’t make it past the end of September. Then there are teams that have great hitters and a supporting cast of role players that most times will find success. However, when many of them are duking it out in a playoff series, they won’t have a chance if their big bats aren’t making contact with that little white ball traveling faster that most other things on this earth. Most times these players will hit a random slump at the worst possible time. Other times, like future hall-of-famer Barry Bonds until 2002, a great player will simply not be able to perform at the plate. Bonds made it to the postseason four times as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates and once as a member of the San Francisco Giants until he finally started hitting. He hit just like the National League batting champion he was during his monster postseason run in 2002, including a batting average of almost .500 and five home runs in the Giants’ 2002 World Series loss to Anaheim in seven games.
Many people say they don’t enjoy baseball because it’s “too slow”. The fact is that it’s a game of anticipation and that’s what makes it great, but that’s another column. The point is that even those who aren’t fans of the game might enjoy the 3 1/2 to 4 weeks in October if they decide to tune in, that is if they don’t mind staying up until close to midnight.
