MLB: The Calm Before the Storm

Posted on | October 21, 2008 | No Comments

Tuesday was a very quiet day for Major League Baseball as the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies really started to prepare for each other. So now wouldn’t be a bad time to look back on the season and see where we were and where we are right now.

Remember back to last spring when the Rays were expected to improve greatly and actually perhaps win 80 games? Some people laughed at that and said there was no way the Rays would win that many games. Not in the American League East with the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. And not with the Toronto Blue Jays having such a great pitching staff.

Boy was everybody wrong.

No one thought the Rays would be THIS good. And just about everyone thought the Detroit Tigers would be really good… they weren’t. Makes you wonder if the Rays and Tigers somehow switched players and names over the winter?

But it mostly just comes down to heart. The Rays are all heart while the Tigers are pretty much heartless and gutless.

Meanwhile, the Phillies were expected to compete for the playoffs and possibly the World Series. The favorites back in the Spring were probably the Arizona Diamondbacks, the New York Mets, and the Chicago Cubs. Of course, one of those teams made the playoffs and then quickly ripped the heart out of their fans. But I won’t go into that again.

But the Mets were a disappointment again. The Diamondbacks were really a disappointment. The D-Backs had a great first month, played in the worst division in baseball (by far) and stil couldn’t win the division.

So it’s been a crazy, and in many ways an unpredictable season, and now it all comes down to this. The Tampa Bay Rays against the Philadelphia Phillies. It may not be the most glamorous match-up, but it certainly should be entertaining.

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