September '07 = Baseball Heaven
Anthony Russo
In a year of unprecedented milestones and record breaking, the 2007 season is riding its way straight to October, but as a season like this can predict there are enough road blocks to the playoffs to keep every fan on the edge of their seats. It's almost impossible that a baseball lover doesn't have at least one team in the hunt for the playoffs as 12 different states are represented and 16 teams are hunting down eight elusive spots.
I'm not going to lie numbers like this light a fire in my undershorts, I can't help but get excited every time I turn on ESPN to see what is changing on a day to day basis. Each game counts in every division. You have the evil empire (Yankees), down and out through June making a charge for the wild card spot with the Rocket anchoring their comeback…not with victories but seeming to have boosted team confidence and moral. The Cardinals have shown glimpses of their '06 championship brilliance to allow them to stumble into a NL Central division race that is more pathetic than a chunky 50-year-old stripper.
Don't get me started on the NL West that still has four of their five teams vying for a playoff spot or wild card. Then we have the Dane Cook commercials on TV getting us amped up for what should be an October for the history books. Some teams are making their case as comeback kids; NY Yankees, Seattle Mariners, Cleveland Indians, LA Dodgers, and Philadelphia Phillies. Then we have the teams that seemingly are trying to give it away: Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, and the Arizona Diamondbacks…notice I mentioned all of the NL Central contenders here!
In all honesty for a baseball fan there will not be another season like the '07 for a long time if not ever again. We've had two players break the 500 homerun benchmark (Thomas, Rodriguez), one 600 homerun barrier (Sosa), 3,000 hit mark reached (Biggio), 300 game winner (Glavine), 350 game winner (Clemens). We had a 23 year old rookie pitch a no-hitter in his second start only to be sent to the bullpen. We've had multiple match ups between future hall of fame pitchers and ex-teammates; Smoltz, Glavine, and Maddux. We saw the bulldog, Orel Hershiser's consecutive scoreless inning streak almost fall with Brandon Webb's 42 innings, and another pitcher (Jenks) go 41 consecutive batters retired to tie a record set in 1972.
Lets not forget the feel good story of the year with Rick Ankiel returning to the major leagues this year not as a pitcher but as one of the best power hitters in the game in August with some announcers calling him, "the Natural." We have Trevor Hoffman in the midst of a division race logging his 500th save earlier this season. We have a son of major league great Cecil Fielder going for 50 home runs in Milwaukee… Seriously all this in one year and as icing on the cake we have a pennant race is almost every division, with small market and big market teams alike all throwing their hand into the pot.
I'm going to assume that you baseball fan's are feeling me on this one, but I am looking forward to the next two months, and hey if the rest of the season sucks the race to the playoffs for the NFL should be heating up come November!
If I left out any major milestones, cough cough, forgive me but that was one purpose…Sorry Barry, but it took a season of all of these other accomplishments to trump how you have bastardized the face of this game and brought it under unbelievable scrutiny.
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