Visiting team chasing a post-season spot, home team just trying to play spoiler. Wednesday night's game goes deep into extra innings, so of course Thursday's getaway game is rain-delayed several hours and then finally played before a few hundred fans.
The best part of that last paragraph is that it applies to two different series in the National League this week.
The second-best part is that neither the Astros' playoff hopes nor the Phillies' playoff hopes had anything to do with each other, since nobody in the NL Central is good enough to compete for a wild card spot.
By the way, you do realize that even after everything, even with the lead at half a game, a reasonable bettor would still consider St. Louis a slight favorite to win its division, right? This reminds me a lot of (the roles reversed of) when everyone left Houston for dead after last year's Game 5 (the big Pujols home run against Brad Lidge) yet Roy Oswalt very matter-of-factly took the mound in Game 6 and shut 'em down.
The third-best part is that until she heard otherwise this morning, Julia thought the Cardinals were really bad, thanks mainly to their eight-game losing streak back in June (thanks to cable TV in hotel rooms and on cruise ships plus lack of cable TV in our apartment, we saw more SportsCenter on our honeymoon than anywhere else) -- not to be confused with their eight-game losing streak in August.
Heck of a team when they're not dropping a million games in a row.
Posted by Matt Bruce at September 29, 2006 12:38 PM