The other day, my pops was lamenting the advent of the Wild Card, now ten years old, in the Major League Baseball playoffs. Why should a team a dozen games off the division lead get a chance to compete in a postseason that's starting to resemble the Stanley Cup playoffs, where seedings are all but meaningless? A valid inquiry, yes, but considering three of the past four World Series teams weren't good enough to win their divisions, something has to be right with the system. Just about all of the division races this year were decided with weeks or months left in the season (save for the always saucy AL West), which translates to Andruw Jones having a little more focus saved up for the strip clubs, and Torii Hunter doing whatever it is you do in Minnesota when you know you've got your shit all wrapped up. 

Basically, if you've got nothing to play for throughout September, it can be kind of hard to kick it into high gear come October. The Wild Card "race" is generally closer than the majority of the division races, instilling a playoff-type atmosphere in the regular season out of necessity. You can't help but think that that helped the '03 Marlins and '02 Angels and Giants leapfrog the Braves, A's, and D-Backs - all of which had the pleasure of watching those World Series with Kleenex, Ben and Jerry's, and division title in hand. 

Now, before we get any further, let's address those crazy villainous underachievers, the Cubs. I'm a White Sox fan, but not a Cubs hater. In fact, the Cubs are the singular sports franchise that brings me joy no matter what they do; I was partying in the middle of Clark and Addison when they clinched the division last year, and I was ready to overturn Volkswagens and Saabs when "Do The Bartman" - the track off of the stellar The Simpsons Sing The Blues - tragicomically came back into vogue. However nothing, absolutely nothing, beats watching the Cubs and their faithful fall flat on their faces with stunning consistency. This year provided a new twist, rife with infighting, bad attitudes, and blaming the lack of success on, of all things, their announcers. Yeah, go Cubs, you yuppie bitches.

Onto the NL teams who didn't implode. The Cardinals take their league-best 105 wins up against a Dodger team that, despite playing in LA, still seems to be a bit south of the national radar. The Dodgers are defined by their pimp closer, Eric Gagne, but the Cards have a comparable answer in Jason Isringhausen. Adrian Beltre, the league leader in homers with 48 (why isn't anyone talking about no one hitting 50 this year? Just don't step on the rug, a needle might poke you), doesn't get walks ever, and the Blue made a somewhat bizarre midseason trade, bidding adieu to team leader and next-great-Italian-Dodger-catcher Paul Lo Duca. The Cards have been on cruise control since what seems like March and have the most insanely potent non-Yankee lineup in memory. People keep talking shit about their starting pitching, mostly the same people who keep saying they'd rather have Peyton Manning than Tom Brady. Cards in four.

Despite winning every division title since Nevermind came out, the Braves were unanimously picked second in the NL East behind the Phillies. Meanwhile, the Astros were thought to be serious contenders after grabbing half the Yankee staff in Roger Clemens and Andy Petitte. Shit doesn't always turn out how it's supposed to, as seen when Bobby Cox steadied a greatly depleted Atlanta club to yet another title and the Astros underachieved Cub-style, even after adding one of the game's best young offensive talents in Carlos Beltran at midseason. However, unlike the Cubs, the 'Stros got their super-talented shit together to make a strong late run and eek out the Wild Card over the Giants. The Braves have the better baseball mind behind them, but the Astros have the talent and momentum to take 'em. Houston in four, three if the Killer B's are all sexy-like. 

The American League playoffs feature the usual cast of characters you'd expect. For the second year in a row, the Minnesota Twins follow up their White Sox dominance with a first round date to meet the Yankees. It's been kind of weird, these three years of the Twins winning the AL Central. I have to hate them in the regular season because they're just so mean to my Sox, but come playoff time, how can anyone root against a team that was to be wiped from existence right before they started rattling off division titles? And against the extremely-American-in-a-bad-way Yankees, of all teams? New York looks to be a tad weaker than in past years, with a suspect starting rotation. But, they've still got the usual Bronx Bombers, plus ARod and Sheffield, and Mariano Rivera is back to being the best closer in the game. The Twins are coming into the playoffs with no particular momentum at all (the Yanks can thank the White Sox for not bothering to challenge the Twins at all down the stretch, right after we thank them for the Jose Contreras-Esteban Loaiza deal), and teams are now pretty far removed from being taken off guard by the little-Twins-that-could. Yanks in a sweep.

The other ALDS match-up is easily the most interesting of the first round, pitting the Angels against the AL East's permanent second place team, the Red Sox. The Angels simply hung around for much of the season, waiting for Bartolo Colon to start winning or, at the very least, stop being so fat, as Vlad Guerrero and Jose Guillen won games with their bats. By the end of the season, Colon was still fat (but now winning) and Guillen had tweaked out hardcore style and was booted off the team. It came down to an end-of-season series with an Oakland club that lacked that je ne sais quoi that's been up in that bitch for the past few years that always made them one of those teams everyone roots for. Like the Astros, the playoffs have been going strong for a few weeks now in Anaheim, and not so much in Boston. Not that they don't have their weapons, with arguably the best starting rotation in the playoffs and the AL's top two longballers in Manny Ramirez and the cuddly David Ortiz. This series could very easily go either way, and usually when that's the case, it comes down to the bullpen, where Anaheim gets the nod. And these dudes just won the World Series two years ago, as opposed to the Red Sox, who, uh, haven't in a while. Angels in five.

Angels-Yankees could go either way, but you have to think at some point that the lack of a decent rotation in New York is going to hurt them, but there's the time-tested "Well, they're the Yankees" reasoning that suggests they should win every World Series until the Revolution comes. But ever since I had a bit of a shrine going in my bedroom in high school for that awesome Expos prospect with the Russian first name, I've wanted to see my boy Vladimir on the biggest stage in the game. You can have ARod and Jeter. This is where Guerrero asserts himself as the best offensive player in the game. Angels in seven.

It's a funny thought, a team with thirteen fewer wins being an odds-on favorite over the team with the best record in baseball, but that's probably how it will go down if Houston meets St. Louis. The Cards simply haven't had anything to play for since they were so unimaginably ahead of the NL Central pack for so long, and the Astros are the hottest team in baseball with a talent base that suggests more than 92 wins. They're like the Cubs, only together. Astros in five.

Guerrero versus Berkman, Colon versus Oswalt, Rally Monkey versus stupid hill and pole in the outfield. It'll be totally sweet. The Astros continue the Wild Card World Series trend started by the Angels of two years ago, and get Bags and Biggio the rings they shwing for. Astros in six, White Sox in '05.

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Jeremy Keller is a Chicago native who heads up the elusive LAS Sports department with the cutest blonde curl-fro you ever did see.
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