Ell-Sean Smith is 45-years old, has been married for 20 years, is the father of three kids (two currently in college at Texas Southern and Clark-Atlanta Universities), and holds a BA in Political Science, plus a Masters in Business Administration. He was born in Oakland, Calif. and raised a few miles north in Richmond, Calif. A sports junkie, specifically basketball, baseball and football, since the age of seven, he currently does freelance writing for http://rivals.com's http://norcalpreps.com covering girls and boys high school basketball. Periodically, he will do other pieces regarding sports issues as well. If you have any comments on my articles, please email me at ellsean62@gmail.com. Watching the Colorado Rockies run through the NL play-offs in undefeated fashion begs the question: does the best team win in postseason play? Or is it a simple matter of the hottest team winning it all?
No offense to Colorado fans, but just mentioning their name this late in the season is odd. Say "Rockies" and images of Andre "the Big Cat" Galarraga, Dante Bichette and Larry Walker banging hits all over Coors Field and leading the league with gaudy statistics, while their pitching staff gave the runs back and they barely finish at .500, dance in your head. They were MLB's answer to, with a twist of geographic irony, the Denver Nuggets of the '80s in the NBA. The Nuggets, led by scoring machines Alex English, Dan Issel, and Kiki Vandeweghe, would score 125 points a game on any team and give up the same on defense.
Also, no offense once more to Rockies' fans, but this writing makes the assumption that the best team is actually in the American League. Or is it?
Well, if won-loss records are the general indicator, then the race for best team honors is a tie between the current squads battling it out on the junior circuit, the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox. Both teams finished with 96-66 records, while Colorado finished 90-73 (including a play-off win over San Diego to even get in the postseason).
In my humble opinion, numbers go out the window when the postseason arrives. Look across the board in sports history. In NCAA hoops, the title game of '83 ended in bizarre fashion with the N.C. State Wolfpack (25-10, ending with a 10-game win streak) upsetting the Houston "Phi Slamma Jamma" Cougars(31-3), 54-53.
Two years later, Villanova (25-10), on April fool's Day no less, knocked off mighty Georgetown(35-3)and 7-foot Patrick Ewing by shooting an astonishing 79% from the field in a66-64 stunner.
In baseball, the "Miracle Mets" of '69 knocked off Baltimore's mighty Orioles (a great 109-53 squad that season including no less than three future Hall of Fame players) in five games, and the Cincinnati Reds beat the defending champion Oakland A's team with Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire (the "Bash Brothers" if you will) in the '90 World Series in four straight games.
In each case, the best team didn't win, but the hottest one during that time did and any coaching any sport will tell you that they would prefer that their team play its best ball at the end of the season.
Will the same happen in this year's World Series?
We can't say, but the Rockies have just as good a chance at beating either the Indians or the Red Sox in six games. Bizarre to hear a prediction in that sentence? No and yes.
No, because the Rockies, for those not living in the free world, are the hottest team baseball has seen in quite some time having won 21 of their last 22games, and yes, it is bizarre because they now have an eight day layoff as they await the winner in the American league series.
Everything has gone Colorado's way. Timely hitting, as a team batting average of only .242 (but it includes four postseason homers by NLCS MVP Matt Holiday and eight RBI by second baseman Kazuo Matsui so far in the play-offs), plus great pitching (to the tune of a measly 2.08 ERA throughout the play-offs) will attest, the Rockies are more than a formidable foe for either American league team
Consider some important points. On September 16, the Rockies were 4.5 games behind San Diego for the wild card and 6.5 games behind Arizona for the division title, both teams which they have eliminated from the play-offs. Also, they were one strike from elimination during the season's final weekend and they collected three runs in the bottom of the 13th inning off of Trevor Hoffman, baseball's career saves leader, to capture the wild-card tiebreaker in the extra play-off game against the Padres. Along with the 1976 "Big Red Machine," they have won seven straight playoff games and no other teams can say that.
Is fate on their side? At this point, unless you live in Boston or Cleveland, every baseball fan in America is pulling for this team in the midst of such an improbable run,
First baseman Todd Helton said in an interview after the Rockies' 13-0victory over the Florida Marlins on September 16th, "Time is running out, we can't afford losses, and we're going to have to catch some breaks and get some help."
Little did he or any of the rest of us know that the hottest team in the game is doing just fine on their own.