Playoffs

I don't want to talk about what the Green Bay Packers did today. Nor do I want to talk about Brett Favre's career day. Good for you, Brett.

No, I want to talk baseball. The Cubs lost and so did the Mets. And that means that, on the last day of the regular season, the Milwaukee Brewers earned themselves the wild-card slot for the National League playoffs. This is exciting -- the last time Milwaukee was in postseason play, I wasn't yet a teenager. Several days ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers locked up the NL West Division, earning their spot in the playoffs, also.

Which means that it is a not-out-of-the-question scenario that the Dodgers and the Brewers could compete for the NL pennant. Kind of like what I said was a realistic scenario nearly six months ago. Now, the Brewers have to get through Philadelphia, and the Dodgers have to get by the Cubs. Both of these will be tough series. The Brewers have a huge problem in the loss of Ben Sheets to injury. And the Cubs are, by the numbers, the best team in the NL. So I'm getting my gloating in now.

And it's also entirely realistic to imagine the Angels and the Rays compete for the junior league's pennant. Both of those teams should be favored at this point; the Rays don't even know yet whether they'll face the Twins (if the White Sox lose tomorrow) or Chicago (if the Sox win and then beat Minnesota in a one-game playoff on October 1). But I can gloat about that, too -- before the All-Star break, I floated the idea of an Angels-Rays AL pennant series. (No one laughed, either.)