The 35th Street Review

Cover your eyes, fans: the Boston Red Sox may be on the verge of murdering baseball itself.

So the Sox are out. Now what? Now we rebound.

National League Championship Series, Dodgers vs. Phillies: Phillies fans, as we all know, are insane. And hateful. And spiteful. And mean. And their players carp a lot to the press. Also, Joe Torre and Manny Ramirez don’t need any more glorification in the sports press. Sox/35th endorses: Phillies.

American League Championship Series, Red Sox vs. Rays: Simply put, the Red Sox are a sports franchise of pure evil on par with the most rotten of them. Also, the Rays crushed a certain team we were all pulling for in the first place. Sox/35th endorses: Rays.

Astute reader Brian in Vernon Hills pointed out that an ideal, most gleefully schadenfreudian outcome would be a Rays sweep of the Dodgers, since the basic mathematical logic would deduce R > D and D > CHC, therefore R > CHC. If wins(R) = D + 4, and wins(CWS) = 1 while wins(CHC) = 0, the Sox are therefore the mightiest team in Chicago while the other one is, in all honesty, a loser echoing through the ages.

But we already knew that. Go Rays. Or anyone, really.

What we talk about when we talk about Non-Sox playoff series:

Cubs/Dodgers: If the Sox win (more on that tomorrow), may the Cubs win as well; if not, well, it will at least be kind of fun to watch Carlos Zambrano murder one (or many!) of his teammates on national television. Whatever. Prediction: Cubs in 4 OR Dodgers in 5.

Red Sox/Angels: Under no circumstances should any person not from New England ever pull for the Red Sox. Not today, not tomorrow, not when they were supposedly victims of those big bad Yankees and certainly not when they can trade away arguably the best hitter in the American League and actually be better off for it. Prediction: Red Sox can go straight to Hell.

Phillies/Brewers: Brewers fans and the city of Milwaukee are great, even if their team really isn’t. Philadelphia sports fans throw batteries at opposing players and the best song written about their city is also the most depressing song ever written about any city. Ever. Not sure how to feel about this series. Prediction: Tie.

We’ll have more (much more) playoff talk later today. Until then, let’s hear it for. . . whoever.

The myth of “Perfect attendance” infiltrates the American League East.

Things to watch for as the Sox go to Fenway:

Hawkeroo rejoicing the departure of Jay Mariotti, but in a sad kind of way. Every man is defined as much by his enemies as he is by his friends, and to say the ever-jubilant Hawk is an exception would be a lie. Every man needs people on his side, but only because every man has people working against him. What good are D.J., Hall of Fame director Jim Angio, Aeris, and everyone at Fox’s Pizza in Orland Park if they are not united in a common war against a certain curmudgeonly sports”writer”? Who needs good when there is no evil to prevail against? This may just be the end of White Sox broadcasting as we know it.

One of two teams will play the best baseball it’s played in recent memory. Let’s face it, the last time these two teams it was pretty ugly for at least one involved party, what with the South Siders losing a pitchers and two terrible games and whatnot. This time around the Twins still won’t go away but the Red Sox are in danger of doing exactly that. Oddly, this puts any number of Twins losses in the interest of both sets of Sox, as the BoSox lead the Wild Card by 2.5 games and the ChiSox are 1.5 up in the Central. Unfortunately for at least one of them the Twins are playing the A’s, all but guaranteeing two of three for those jerks, what with their advanced runners and clutch hitting. Losers.

At least one game will be decided by a football score. We’re looking at two high-powered offenses here, although everyone knows the Red Sox have lost a step since losing a certain alleged left-fielder. David Pauley, Boston’s projected stater for Saturday’s game, has a career 8.41 ERA and 2.26 WHIP. Then again, he is a no-name pitcher the Good Guys have never faced. Someone’s going to win 9-3. Here’s hoping it’s the Right Sox.