I'm skeptical that Vegas had a parlay on this, but I'm wondering who would throw down money in March saying the last two teams standing in the National League would be the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. What would the odds would have been — 10,000 to 1?
But remember what the cerebral accountant Kevin from The Office said: "If someone gives you 10,000-1 odds on anything, you take it. If John Mellencamp ever wins an Oscar, I'm going to be a very rich dude."
The improbability of either the D'backs or Rocks in the NLCS was narrow, but to have both of them fight it out for a trip to the World Series? That's unprecedented.
ESPN.com's predicted standings had Arizona third and Rockies last in the NL West. Granted, a few trendy prognosticators had the D'backs in the playoffs, but not one of them said the Rockies would win even the Wild Card.
And finally, a D'backs/Rockies series is the first such NLCS in its 13-year reign of the six-divisions in which both teams came from the NL West. We had all-East series ('97, '99) and all-Central ones ('04, '05), but never any all-West action. This is also a series with two teams who didn't exist before 1993. That has, predictably, never happened before either.
Arizona made it to the NLCS first, but only because the scheduling wizards had them play before Colorado/Philly on Saturday. I switched over to the game, strangely enough, during the crucial fifth inning. The lovable Chicago Cubs were down 3-1 and Livan Hernandez was having control issues that not even the late Eric Gregg could save him from. Walking the entire bases loaded, he tantalized Mark DeRosa into an inning-ending double play. That basically took the wind out of Wrigley field for the rest of the game as Arizona went onto win 5-1.
Now, I was wishing for the Diamondbacks to quickly knock the Cubs out of the playoffs due to my overt support for all things Diamondbackal. But upon seeing the anguish on Cubs fans' faces, I suddenly empathized with Homer Simpson when he wished for Ned Flanders' left-handed shop to go out of business. Unfortunately, upon seeing the Cubs' season barricaded, there was nothing I can do to help the Cubs, except perhaps sell them some left-handed power hitters I have lying around. How about a gently used Carlos Peña?
Article comments