Idiots Write About Sports

I go into each season with a simple hope — that the A’s will play meaningful ballgames deep into September. Maybe I should set my sights a little higher, but really, all that you can really reasonably demand as a fan is as few of those late-September just-playing-out-the-string games as possible. And for the last six years — hey, Oakland was nominally in the playoff race in September 1999 — that philosophy has served me well.

But not this year. As chronicled in this very space the past few days, the A’s season, in terms of postseason hopes and dreams, is over. If Billy Beane isn’t think about 2006 at this very moment, he’d best start. And while there’s always solace in the cry of “wait til next year,” that provides very little distraction for the here and now.

So what should I, as a disenfranchised A’s fan, be rooting for during the remainder of the 2005 season? I’m not talking about abandoing the green-and-gold here — I’ll still watch the games on TV and even shell out my hard-earned greenbacks for tickets whenever I’m up in the Bay Area. But I can’t possibly see myself finding the wins as exhilirating or the losses as devastating as I do when Oakland is involved in a pennant race. The long, glorious road to an 80-win season isn’t going to take up that much mental energy, quite frankly.

With that in mind, here are the teams I’ll be pulling for on the sly, as I continue to watch the A’s struggle to play .500 baseball.

• I’d like to see the Baltimore Orioles win the American League East. Many, many reasons for this. For starters, this was my wife’s local Major League team as she grew up in a pre-Nationals Virginia. For another, should we ever decide to eschew our elitist West Coast lifestyle, the Baltimore-Washington metroplex is probably where we’d wind up. I wish nothing but the best for Miguel Tejada, known ‘round these parts as The Ex-Athletic Who Had Nice Things to Say About Oakland on his way out of town, and since his success will hardly come at our expense this season, I hope he tears up the league.

But most of all, Baltimore winning the East means that the Yankees and Red Sox will not. And more important, it means one of those teams — if not both — would wind up outside the playoff picture. Fans in most markets have long come to grips with the fact that nothing in baseball is guaranteed — certainly not a postseason berth. And it’s a lesson our brethren on the Atlantic seaboard should learn as well.

• I’d like to see the Minnesota Twins win the Central Division. Fun team to watch, nice fanbase, and the possibility for an awkward moment when Bud Selig hands Carl Pohlad the World Series Trophy to the thunderous boos of Twin Cities fans who remember that Pohlad was willing to gas the team for what would have been screw-up-your-taxes-money for a billionaire like himself. Plus, I picked the Twins to win the World Series way back when, and I like to look prescient as much as possible.

• I have no particular dog in the AL West race. I enjoy watching the Angels, and Vladimir Guerrero is perhaps my favorite baseball player, non-Oakland/non-Tejada division. (Get well soon, Vlad; your duplicitous fantasy league owners need you.) The trouble is, an extend run by Anaheim into the postseason will inspire lazy columnists to pen screeds about how stealing third with Guerrero at the plate or bunting in the top of the second is smarty, heady baseball, and we need less of that kind of idiocy. And I’m sort of interested to see whether Anaheim losing the division title under heartbreaking circumstances will cause the normally effusive Rex Hudler to openly question the existence of a loving God — that would make for some powerful television here in the Southland.

On the other hand, I am no fan of Buck Showalter, who is apparently under the impression that Abner Doubleday and Alexander Carthwright consulted him when inventing the game of baseball. A Rangers playoff berth might cause Buck’s head to swell to eight times its normal size and that can’t be good for his long-term health.

• I am fickle with my National League affections. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Dodgers do well — it would irritate hacks like Bill Plaschke and at least one analytically-minded general manager should do well this year. It might as well be Paul DePodesta.

Then again, after four years of college in America’s Finest City, I have a soft spot in my heart for the San Diego Padres — even if my good pal Steve Lutz is tossing around words like “death spiral” to describe his first-place team. (You want to see a death spiral, Steve? Watch your team get swept by the Devil Rays and Indians in rapid succession.)

I am largely indifferent to the Giants, but since I share this blogspace with Jason, it’d be nice if one of us has a pennant race to chronicle. Plus, Jason deserves some sort of reward for sitting through all those Felipe Alou pitching changes.

Oh, and I like the Florida Marlins — saw them at Dodger Stadium a week or so ago, and they’re a real fun team to watch. Did I mention that?

So if any one of these four things should happen — Orioles take the east, Twins win the central, Angels and Rangers disband quietly before the end of the season, and three teams tie for first in the NL West — I’ll be a satisfied if not entirely happy camper. At least it will give me something to do while wondering whether Eric Chavez will ever crack that elusive 10-homer mark.

As an NL person, I'll pick it up...

*If the Cubs can't manage to win the Central (if we can get the entire pitching staff off the DL, it still looks possible), then the Brewers, an additional 2.5 games back, can go ahead and pick up the slack. The Seligs no longer own them, so, clean slate.
*I'd like to see the Nationals be the ones to knock off the Braves in the East. First to last is a 3.5 game spread right now, so anyone could do it yet, but the Nationals have a lot of good karma coming their way after being jerked around the past 3-4 seasons, with contraction and the outraged throng of one guy in a robot suit and playing a quarter of their home games on a completely different landmass.
*I've never really made much of the West, so the current leaders, San Diego, are as good a team as any.
*Wild card will go to either Chicago or Milwaukee because, really, St. Louis has the Central already.

As for the AL:
*Agreed. Go Baltimore.
*Agreed. Go Minnesota.
*Texas or Seattle in the West, but since Seattle, well, sucks, go Rangers.
*Wild card? How about Toronto? They're in it too, with the Sox and Yanks sandwiching them by a half-game on either side. That would mean two AL East teams make the playoffs, but neither one is Boston or New York. And wouldn't that just be FUN?

I have almost no interest in the AL (except seeing the Yankees & Sox both fall on their faces... please?!). I was glad to see right-winger extraordinaire Curt Schilling get the hell outta Dodge (or Phoenix, anyway), and equally happy to see the worst teammate this side of Barry Bonds (ie, Randy Johnson) leave...and STRUGGLE! Nothing pleases me more than knowing that two of the D'backs brightest spots this season came from those trades. So: Go, Baltimore!
As far as the NL West, it's nice to see both the Padres and the D'backs doing well this year. There's only so many Dodgers-Giants nostalgia fests one can take. My personal rooting interest is Arizona, but I'll be happy for San Diego if they take the division.
I'd say I want to see the Nationals do well, but I have a hard time rooting for any D.C. team. I don't want Bush to end up with an entire playoff series or two to rack up the photo ops. I just don't think I could take it.
NL Central? Don't care. AL West? Don't care. Well, you get the idea...

"I don't want Bush to end up with an entire playoff series or two to rack up the photo ops."

If George Soros gets his grubby mitts on the team, I don't think you'll have to worry too much about that.

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