The 35th Street Review

Introducing the 35th Street Review’s newest feature. In this installment: three, maybe three-and-a-half easy steps to dominating the junior circuit next year.

The sports media longs for the World Series of yore - but no one’s really sure why.

To enjoy this year’s World Series is really nothing more than to revel in the same loathing and contempt we always have. And that’s a good thing.

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.