Well, Now We Know

And frankly, once the Indians lost Game 5, I wasn't too surprised. They had a chance to close it out at home with their ace on the mound, and choked, then went to Fenway and lost again with their other ace on the mound, and neither of them impressed at all. You just kind of knew the Sox were going to win tonight, no matter how much you hoped otherwise, and well, they did. The Boston Yankees, I should say. Arrogant fans, arrogant jerkwad players, buying up everything they need, no longer the lovable underdog, they're just the Evil Empire redux. May they be pwninated in four.

I'm sure everyone and his brother will pick the Sox in four or five. Hell, I hope they pick the Sox in "three" -- we know how well that worked for the Tigers last year. Because they're the big, bad, AL, because ESPN loves that one of their media juggernauts made it, because they have Josh Freakin' Beckett. Well, anybody bother to check the stats? Seems to me we outscored the Sawx 20-5 at Fenway in June, put a world of hurt on Schilling and Beckett, and took two out of three. See, we've been playing well since BEFORE September.

A few reasons the Rockies are going to rock the Sox:

-- Since May 22, we've had baseball's best record at 79-45; we just had to turn on the afterburners for that final hump into September.

-- We were 21-12 against the AL the past two seasons, a .636 winning percentage, and that was before we were razing everything in our path.

-- The Red Sox play in the AL, sure. They also play in the East. I bet we could have won 96 games if we got to face the Blue Jays, Devil Rays, and Orioles (the first one mediocre, the latter two totally inept) 50 or 60 times a year.

-- The Rockies have lost exactly one game since the middle of September. Why are we going to lose four in a week and a half?

-- We have better speed and defense.

-- The Red Sox aren't equipped to play at Coors. Manny in the cavernous left field? Ortiz at first base? Wakefield's knuckler isn't going to break in the thin air, and Dice-K will be thrown off by pitching at altitude. Let's not tell him about the humidor.

The one problem: the hitting. We have a .242 average in the postseason and we're going to need to turn it on against the Beantown Bombers. Hopefully, the pitching can continue the trend of damping the fuse against high-octane offenses, but the hitting is going to need to bring the sticks. But all year, and especially in October, they've found a way to get it done, however and whenever. National League Champion Rockies sounds surreal enough, but it's not the final stop for the Purple Express. I expect they'll drop the first one against Beckett (but then again, who knows?) then turn on the jets, rip off four, and win the damn thing at home in a game that Denver will always remember.

Rockies in five.