The Good Vibe Playoffs

The Playoffs begin this week with Wild Card action between the Yankees and Twins, and the Diamondbacks and Rockies.

Jump in Dr. Emmet Brown's DeLorean DMC-12 and head forward to the past and see how that statement sounds. The Yankees were rebuilding. The Twins were woebegone. The Diamondbacks had been wracked by mismanagement and were coming off a 93-loss season. And Colorado continued to refuse the Rockies' plea to come down to sea level.

It's a most unlikely set of Wild Card match-ups.

Even more unlikely would be the Twins and Rocks making noise in the post-season. Each is a distant last team in. Minnesota, the last AL team over .500, trailed New York by seven games and Cleveland, the Wild Card winner's first round opponent, by 17.

The Rockies backed into the playoffs six games behind the coasting Dbacks. They finished 16 games worse than the Wild Card winner's reward, the L.A. Dodgers.

In case you missed it, here are the final standings.

I'd like the regular season to matter, so I find it hard to root for them to get beyond the Wild Card. But I'm certainly rooting for the Twins to defeat New York.

Go AstroNatIndianCubDbackDodgers!
As I always root for teams whose fan bases have suffered most, I'm thrilled to see Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington each win 97+ games and waltz to division titles by 20+ games. Cub fans would not be over-indulging to win a second championship in 109 years. And Arizona last ended in a dogpile 16 years ago in one of the most entertaining World Series ever. Go, all of them.

The only teams I could do without this post-season are New York and Boston. The Yankees need to go bereft for half a century before they stir my sympathy. New England has enjoyed sports superiority for a decade and could use a rest. They're still cleaning up the confetti from the last parade, whether that was the Red Sox, Celtics or Patriots.

Cleveland/Houston versus L.A./Washington would undoubtedly validate the regular season and present us with clashes of the titans. It'd be a fitting end to an historic season.