LCS Lacks Star Power

The Rays were the first to get eliminated from October, and within a few days the Diamondbacks, Yankees, and Phillies all followed suit.

So that leaves the Tigers and (reigning AL champs) Rangers to duke it out in the Junior Circuit, while the Brewers, winners of their first postseason series since 1982, square up with the Cardinals.  And to be perfectly honest, I just don't really care what happens to any of them, which I hate to say because I'm such a big baseball fan.  If I had to pick, I'd like to see the Brew Crew and Tigers in the Fall Classic; Milwaukee has the greatest cast of characters and I'll always root for the city of Detroit, but I haven't watched any of the games so far and that's unlikely to change any time soon. 

In the meantime my attention has focused to football, where the Patriots are 4-1 and just dropped the Jets over the long weekend.  I am also praying for the NBA lockout to end before the season is lost for good, which would be a miracle in and of itself.

Baseball has lost my interest because the top two teams couldn't even make it out of the first round (which, by the way, I hate because the better teams can fall so easily during a five game series). The Bronx Bombers, the richest team in all the land, suffered a case of deja-vu from their ill-fated 2006 ALDS as they lost to the Tigers and Justin Verlander while Alex Rodriguez failed to come up with the big hit.  Ironically, a team that was carried by its prolific offense during the regular season left baserunners all over the place and couldn't deliver timely hits.  A-Rod didn't single-handedly sabotage the Yankees' postseason, though, since he had multiple accomplices in Mark Teixeira, Nick Swisher, Russell Martin, and Derek Jeter. I didn't think New York would go too far in October with their lack of starting pitching anyways, but their star-studded roster and accompanying media cyclone will be missed.

And then there were the Phillies, who seemingly guaranteed themselves the NL pennant when they added Cliff Lee to a rotation that already featured aces Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels.  When they bolstered their sagging offense with a midseason trade for righthanded slugger Hunter Pence, the superteam had all the pieces in place for an easy glide to the World Series championship. But after taking a 2-1 lead through the first three games and going up by that score in Game Four, Oswalt lost his mojo and got outdueled by St. Louis's midseason import Edwin Jackson.  That set the stage for a winner-take-all Game Five in Phillie, where Rafael Furcal and Skip Schumaker (not Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman, or Matt Holliday) teamed up to scrape a run of Doc in the first, the only scoring play in what turned out to be a 1-0 heartbreaker for the City of Brotherly Love as Pence, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Shane Victorino, and Raul Ibanez mustered just three hits off an utterly dominant Chris Carpenter.

So without Philly, New York, and Boston (who couldn't even have the decency to make the playoffs this season), many of the game's stars have been yanked off the game's grandest stage.  Sure, there's still Phat Albert and Prince Fielder and Josh Hamilton, but none of their teams seem exciting or interesting.  Where's Brian Wilson's beard? Or David Ortiz's grin? When the most interesting player left is Nyjer Morgan (more commonly known as the f-bomb dropping "T-Plush"), that's saying something.

And it's not good.