Monumental series awaits baseball fans

By Josh Griffin

I swear I haven't been sleeping all week, but it sure seems like I've been dreaming. I have been pinching myself so much that I feel like an eight-year old antagonizing my little sister again.

But these dreams have truly become a reality, as the 2002 baseball playoffs are stirring me from the annual slumber of apathy that sets in when the Cubs fall out of the pennant race in spring training. When talking about the match-up between Minnesota and Anaheim, we are not about to compare the Mall of America and Disneyland - the cities' respective landmarks - but about their baseball teams, the Twins and Angels, and the most shocking League Championship Series in baseball history.

Names like Mientkiewicz, Pierzynski, Spiezio and Eckstein fit in the American League Championship Series like Jeter and Giambi fit on the waiver wire. The greatest part of this series, though, is the beginning of parity in the game that has brought the final four teams down to San Francisco, St. Louis, Minnesota and Anaheim. The combined payroll of the Angels and Twins is still approximately two A-Rods short of the Yankees.

As big market, high payroll teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers and Mariners enjoy October as an off-season, two hard-nosed teams with phenomenal management will square off for a shot at Destiny's Team, the St. Louis Cardinals (who will knock off the home town Giants in six) in the World Series.

All the while the New York Mets will get together, get real stoned and try to figure out how all of this happened at the same time as they were smoking their 100 million dollar payroll all the way down to last place.

Maybe baseball isn't in such bad shape after all, and my dreams have come true.