Pennant Races

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I had a stray thought about the Yankees-Red Sux race from way back in 1978.

People generally recall that the Yankees were 14.5 games back in July and that they caught Boston leading to the one game playoff at Fenway where Bucky Fu**ing Dent became a legend.

What people forget is that going into the last day of the season the Yankees had a one-game lead with one to play. All they had to do on the final day was to beat the lowly Cleveland squad, or hope Boston lost.

Cleveland had nothing to play for, and they were bad that year. Didn’t matter. They beat the Yankees that day, and 13-year old me was devastated.

I love the baseball races for the playoffs.

Back then only 4 teams made the playoffs in each league. Now there are wild cards, but the races are still awesome.

Houston and Seattle are tied in the AL West.

Cleveland is just 1.5 games back of Boston for the wild card, and they still have a chance in the central.

The Yankees can chase down Toronto and will almost certainly host playoff games in the first series.

It’s all right there, and hardly anyone is watching because football season is in week 2 and people enjoy watching the 6 good teams in the league beat the hell out of the 24 teams that suck.

It’s only week two and I could make a reasonable pick of the final 4 in the NFL

Eagles against Packers in the NFC

Bills against Ravens or Chiefs in AFC.

The next 16 weeks will only change that if the quarterbacks for any of those teams gets maimed.

As for baseball, we are more than 150 games in and I can make a case for 5 teams in each league:

Brewers, Dodgers, Phillies, Cubs, Padres.

Yankees, Jays, Tigers, Mariners, Astros.

Any of those 10 teams can win it all.

I walked the sites on Friday and someone asked:

“Did you watch the game last night?”

“Yeah, Yankees put it away early,” I said, “Fried pitched great.”

“I was talking about the Bills,” he said.

“Oh, I didn’t know they played,” I answered.

Go Yankees!

Baseball is the game to watch, folks.

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