This Could Get Ugly

A good friend of mine really struggled to watch playoff baseball, not because he wasn't interested but rather he was too keenly interested. Simply put, the pressures of October were nearly too much for him to handle.

I'm starting to understand how he felt and it's only August. In the National League only four teams can reasonably be eliminated from the playoff chase. It's sort of like watching European horse racing (excruciating for the record): everybody stands in their irons in one big, barely jogging mass for three-quarters of the course, then hunkers down for a furious sprint in the stretch.

That's how the NL feels after the Rockies swept the Brewers this week and then split with Cubs to leave them only two games out of the Wild Card and within striking distance in the NL West. The Rockies! Steve Phillips just picked them to make the playoffs.

I'm fine with that as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the Cubs. Sweet Lou's squad has not responded to the loss of Soriano, going 2-4 on their latest road trip. The losses were only tempered by the fact that Milwaukee was losing too, but Chicago needs to find some answers this week at home against Cincinnati and a suddenly relevant St. Louis team. When Soriano went down I circled August 28-30 on my calendar. It's the final series between the Cubs and Brewers and it was going to be pivotal. Now I'm just hoping both teams can tread water long enough that the winner of that series will still be in first place at the end of the month.

And then there's the Red Sox. As you've no doubt heard, Eric Gagne didn't have a good trip to the Charm City and now the Yankees are a scant four games back in the AL East. Make no mistake, if New York catches Boston this race is over. Boston's hopes of a World Series already look pretty shaky but if the Yankees return from the dead it would be catastrophic for Sox fans. They had done something they never would've had the balls to do before this year: bury the Yanks, disregard them.

To lose that lead? Well, it would feel like 2003 all over again.

I can't deal with all of this, so I'm just going to keep preparing for college football season and try not to scoreboard watch. Somebody nudge me when this race reaches the stretch. I'm afraid it's all I can give.