Baseball Drawing to a Close

Walk off wild pitch--hey, we take them however--wins the game for St. Louis over the Cubbies today. (www.mlb.com)

All the division races have been decided with about a week or so left in the regular season. Your champions are Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Arizona in the NL and New York, Detroit, and Texas in the AL. The wildcard races are still being decided. In the AL, Boston has been fading over the past days, and is in a fight with Tampa Bay who is just 1.5 games behind. Lurking with an outside chance are the Angels of Anaheim or where ever. In the NL, it is between Atlanta and St. Louis, with the Braves ahead by 2 games. There will probably not be a repeat winner of the World Series as the Giants are 4.5 games out.

It has been a fun year for baseball in my opinion. The game has purged itself of the steroid pretenders, changing offense, and changing what is important. I like the way it is going, and to me, the grand old game of baseball is doing OK.

We'll touch on the Royals, and their season and future, in a later post, but suffice it to say for now that the Royals have an exciting future. They have played .500 baseball since early July (basically the All Star break on) and have been especially hot these past weeks. Now, I am not impressed by September success, since so many teams are mailing it in, but it just gives a glimpse of what can be. The team was 40-41 at home, and drew about 1.7 million to the K to watch. For a throw away year, it has been a lot of fun, and people paid more attention than you thought they might have.

The New York Mets surprised by playing around the .500 mark almost all year. 76-82 presently for a .481 winning percentage for a team that was essentially broke and whose ownership may go down with the Madoff ship. I don't know what all the Mets have in the pipeline, but they are good enough to watch. It is tough though, those Phillies are a very good team and they will be hard to overcome.

It won't be long for the first round of playoffs to start--next weekend as a matter of fact. Post season baseball is coming.