Rocky Mountain High

How thrilled was Fox that the Red Sox pulled out that ALCS over the Tribe? At 3-1 Cleveland with one more game in the Jake, I'm sure there were some Fox execs who were contemplating a skyscraper dive. I actually thought that a Cleveland/Colorado World Series could mark the end of the Fall Classic on network television. They already moved more than half the playoffs to TBS this year, and I'm sure that the ratings for an Indians/Rockies showdown would have sealed the cable deal. After that kind of disaster, next year's playoffs might have been on Spike.

Luckily for Fox, Big Papi and the (cow)boys persevered, and so we do not have to face a World Series that would have felt a bit like ten years ago and the '97 edition - Indians/Marlins. Which was, you may remember, an excellent World Series. Then again, you may not remember that, because pretty much nobody watched it.

That was a turning point Series, a year when it felt like baseball sunk to a cynical low, as an owner of a four-year-old expansion team that played in a town with no baseball tradition and seemingly no interest in the sport bought the Fall Classic, bought the manager (Jim Leyland), bought the rent-a-sluggers (Sheff, Moises, Bobby Bo) and the arms-for-hire (Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, Alex Fernandez), and then brought the World Series crown to Miami for about a minute before abruptly selling everything he'd bought because, huh, it turned out that Miami still didn't give a shit about baseball, World Series or not.

Other than the fact that both franchises entered the bigs together in '93 and still feel like expansion teams (mostly because of their terrible uniforms), there's no comparison to be made between that Marlins team and this year's Rockies squad. Obviously, the Rockies are a young, homegrown squad of go-getters and no-names and they've earned their moment in the spotlight by clicking at exactly the right time. They do highlight a fact of the two-tiered playoff system, however, one that I think takes some of the overall integrity out of the game. At this point, with the Wild Card up for grabs and then the interminable second season of the playoffs, baseball is starting to boil down to the invisible mathematics of "whoever gets hot wins it all." This is exciting, no doubt, and has a compelling element of chance, but at the same time it waters down the meaning of a 162-game season.

But hey - that's the era of the game in which we live, and no team in this era ever has gone into the postseason as hot as the Rockies are right now. At this stage, I kind of hope they win it all, although it's hard to imagine them getting past the Beckett factor. On the other hand, they haven't lost a game since July 17th, so who the hell knows? In closing, let me just say that if they do manage to win the Series, I hope they use all of that residual money to get themselves a better look.