10 3 19 4 4 2 3

St. Louis Cardinals

9

St. Louis Cardinals8

5 6 0 5 2 6 10

Boston Red Sox

11

Boston Red Sox

2 4 3 6 5 4   7

Houston Astros

Red Sox vs. Cardinals

Yankees vs. Red Sox

Well, this game started completely different then I expected it would.  They Yankees had dropped the first game in the last four post season series.  They tried to snap that streak on Tuesday when they opened up the game with two runs.  After adding a run her and there, eventually they were up on the Red Sox 8-0.  Not only were they dominating them, but it even seemed that this could be a demoralizing defeat, as Mike Mussina pitched into the seventh inning with a perfect game.  Finally, in the seventh, the Red Sox found a spark with a base hit to break up the perfect game and no hitter.  The next few batters continued to spread the ball around and scored three runs before Joe Torre pulled his starter.  He then went to the bullpen and found someone that we quickly referred to as "Stinky."  He allowed Mussina's last runner to score and added one of his own before the end of the inning.  After keeping the Yankees off of the board in the bottom of the inning, they came up to the plate down 8-5.  The Yankees brought in Tom "Flash" Gordon who gave up a run before having runners on first and third with David Ortiz up to bat.  He said "cheese" for "flash" and crushed a ball to the wall in left center.  The shot scored both runs and ended up as a triple.  At this point, Torre had seen enough.  Even though his dominating closer, Rivera, had been in Puerto Rico with his family after loosing two family members to electrocution deaths, he had to bring him in only an hour after arriving in the bullpen.  For any Red Sox fan, this must have been a low moment.  He came onto the field to the song "Enter Sandman" and went on to put the Red Sox to sleep.  He finished out the inning and after his team put another two runs on the board in the bottom of the inning, he shut them down again in the top of the ninth to seal the deal for the Yankees in their 10-7 win.  The keys to the Red Sox loss were two.  My first choice is Johhny Damon.  Damon is usually a spark plug for this team offensively.  In this game, when every other starter on the Sox got a hit, Damon was 0-4 with four strikeouts.  My second loser was Manny Ramirez.  As my brother refers to him, "Man-Ram" looked about as agile as a battering ram in this game.  He misplayed a hopper early in the game and let it get past him to the wall and then latter in the game, there was a ball that he should have been able to track down, but he looked like he was running in quicksand.  On the other hand, the drawback for the Yankees in this game, and the aspect of the team that could cause them defeat in the long run was their middle relief.  Rivera is awesome, but between their starter and him, they are in deep trouble.  The game ended up being more interesting than anyone would have expected early on, though, and i wouldn't miss game two tonight. 

After Shilling could not shut up the fans in game 1, game two was the "Who's your daddy?" game in New York.  The Yankees came in riding high after beating Shilling in game one and looked to make it a sweep over the big two on the mound for the Red Sox.  The Yankees again scored in the first, this time after a wild Pedro Martinez gave up a single to score Derek Jeter and give them a 1-0 lead.  The Yankees would keep this lead until the sixth inning, when John Olerud added a two run shot to put the Yankees up 3-0.  Again, the Red Sox could not get it going until late in the game, and still then were only able to muster a single run.  The Yankees held Boston to a mere five hits.  Boston will go back home for games 3-5, but will have to do them without their top two pitchers.  The Yankees are sitting pretty up 2 games to 0.

Cardinals vs. Astros

Game one started out with a bang as we got to see dueling homeruns.  In the top of the inning, Beltran of Houston kept up his excellence this post season by jacking a two run shot.  Pujols, no stranger to the homerun either, popped a two run shot of his own in the bottom half of the inning to tie the score.  They battled back and forth over the next few innings.  Then the Cardinals broke out in the sixth with a huge six run inning to take the 10-4 lead.  The Astros attempted a couple of late game comebacks, but end up coming short in the 10-7 loss.

Game Two was no less exciting with Beltran again crushing a first inning home run.  The Astros added an additional 2 runs over the next few innings, but in the bottom of the fifth, the Cardinals had another breakout inning.  Edmonds and Rolen homered in the inning and put the Cardinals on top 4-3.  The Astros came back to tie the game in the 7th.  However, the Cardinals put the game away in the eighth with back to back bombs by Pujols and Rolen.  The Astros could not make another comeback and the Cardinals jumped up two games to none with the 6-4 victory.

The bombs continued to fly in game three when Larry Walker got a solo homer in the first for the early lead.  Then, in the bottom of the inning, after already plating one, Jeff Kent hit a two run homerun to put them quickly on top 3-1.  St. Louis closed a run in the second with solo shot by Edmonds, but could not get any closer.  In the eighth, Beltran and Berkman added their own solo shots to go up 5-2.  The Astros shut down the Cardinals in the ninth to shut the door and narrow the series to 2-1 Cardinals.

Yankees vs. Twins

This was a series that I thought might finally lead to the downfall of the Yankees.  The twins are one of the best all around teams in the game.  They have a solid offense and can play small ball very well.  The have a good pitching staff and probably the best defense in baseball.  However, they didn't have the intangibles.  The Yankees, on the other hand, live for the intangibles.  Not only do they have supreme confidence, but they have the will to win.  They have a team full of players that not only expect to win, but to be the person who wins it for them.  Minnesota started the series strongly, shutting out the Yankees, playing a solid game, and showing that they were much better than the previous year.  They brought their new confidence and momentum into game two, where the Yankees crushed it.  When they came back late in the game to steal a tie on the road, I knew it was over.  The Yankees showed the Twins that they had woken up a sleeping giant, and they were about to get squashed.  Riding high after their last second win, the Yankees went on to crush the Twins in game three to take a 2-1 lead into game four.  I have to give the Twins allot of respect, they never quit, they never gave up.  If this team stays together and picks up another starter or a big bat they could be real trouble next year.  However, this year it was not meant to be.  After leading big for a large part of the game, the Twins finally gave in and eventually gave up a three run homerun to Rubin Sierra to tie the game.  At this point, I knew that the series was over and a couple of innings later they proved me right by putting the Twins away 6-5, setting up a rematch of one of the best match-ups in baseball with the Red Sox.  I would like to call it a rivalry, but until Boston beats the Yankees when it matters, is just a fun series.  If they can take out the Yankees this year, they will finally begin to get some respect and would have to be the odds on favorite to win it all, even over the Cardinals. 

Cardinals vs. Dodgers

The St. Louis Cardinals came into the post season with the best record in all of baseball.  They had such a large lead on anyone else in the National League that they were able to rest their team for the last two weeks of the season and get healthy.  The only worry was that with all of the off time and the constant losses to lesser teams; would they be able to turn it back on against the Dodgers or would they show up flat?  The Dodgers on the other hand came in with out the opposite situation.  Although they held the lead in their division and had done so for most of the year.  They came down to the last weekend, where they could have either won the division, the wild card, played in a playoff, and even could have ended up out of the post season all together.  When they finally clinched the division, it must have come with a bit of a good, but bad feeling.  After the Astros clinched the Wild Card, the Dodgers knew they would have to play the best team in the League in the first round. 

So, game one begins and the Cardinals played very similar to their twin in the American League, the Red Sox.  They came out strong and dominated the Dodgers in a  8-3 win.  Game two went pretty much the same, with the Cardinals again dominating and winning by the same score of 8-3.  However, game 3 was a horse of a different color.  With Jose Lima starting in a must win game, he completely shut down the Cardinals.  They went innings at a time without a hit.  Meanwhile, the Dodgers got a run here and there, including two home runs by Todd Greene, in order to put a 5 spot on the Cardinals.  Meanwhile, Lima continued to dominate the Cardinals line-up and after appearing to be coming out after the seventh, and then the eighth, took some smelling salt and then came out to knock out the Cardinals in the ninth for a complete game shut out.  These two teams will play in game 4 in Los Angeles on Sunday evening.  Well, the Cardinals decided to get a couple of days of rest before the NLCS when they beat the Dodgers on Sunday 6-2.  An early home run by Sanders helped to keep the teams even and led to a 2-2 score.  Things appeared to be able to shift either way until Albert Pujols stepped up to the plate and belted a 3 run home run in the forth to give them the lead of 5-2 and they would never look back.  They would latter add another run to make it 6-2 and closed out the game to give them some rest before hosting the winner of the Astros/Braves series on Wednesday.

Red Sox vs. Angels

It only takes one word to sum up this series, DOMINATION.  In game one, Boston broke out the big guns.  The stars shone brightly as the Red Sox crushed the upstart Angels.  The Angels had expended allot of energy over the past few weeks as the battled back to pass the Rangers and finally the A's to lead their division.  This went to the last weekend of the season, where the Angels were able to show that they deserved to win and had a great month or so by star Vladimir Guerrero.  After the easy win in game one, they Red Sox had a bit of a let down by their stars but it did not matter as the other players in the lineup stepped up big time in another blow out win, this time 8-3.  I couldn't imagine that anyone would believe that the  Angels could come back, but there were a few and they would be sitting in the visitor's dugout in game 3.  The Angels got down big until Vladimir Guerrero showed why he is his team's MVP, when he hit a grand slam to tie the game.  However, as the game extended into extra innings, there was the feeling that this was jus the year for the Red Sox and the Angels were running on empty.  After walking Manny Ramirez to face David Ortiz, you wondered if this would be their time.  Then Ortiz got a pitch that he liked and sky rocketed it to left center where it would stay as the Red Sox won 8-6 to sweep the Angels and go on to play their hated enemies, the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

Astros vs. Braves

The Astros/Braves series had to be the most bland game of the post season, on paper.  The Astros came on riding high on some huge streaks, including an 18 game home winning streak.  The saw a hole that had been opened up by a bad finish from the Cubs and allot of in conference battling by the West.  It saw the hole and hit it hard.  The Astros should have had no chance at the playoffs this year, but went on such a big run, that they came in as the hottest team in baseball.  The Braves, on the other hand, were one of only a few teams that had locked their position in the playoffs early on.  However, even though they were resting up a bit and setting their rotations, they still managed to get a little banged up right before the playoffs began.  Then the worst thing going into something this big, was that the Braves do not play with confidence or with passion.  So, when the Braves got blasted at home in game one, 9-3, nobody even flinched.  The Braves have lost so many times in the playoffs that people just expect it now.  So, when they came out in game two, to win 4-2 and even up the series it was a bit of a shock.  However, looking back on the Braves it really wasn't.  The Braves rarely get dominated in the post season, they just can't come through in the big games.  So, game three in the dome, where the Astros hadn't lost in more than a month, you could feel the series slipping away from the Braves.  The Astros went on to blast the Braves again, although they did put up a bit of a fight, and took the Braves 8-5.  They will play again in Houston on Sunday and I would be surprised if the Braves even keep it close.

Well, it looked like my prediction would be correct as the Cardinals jumped out to an early 5-2 lead.  However, one of the young players, Laroche came up huge with a 3-run home run to tie the game at 5.  Then in the top of the ninth, Furcal again demonstrated that he was not ready to go to jail and came up big.  After he walked, he immediately stole second base.  With the commentators begging the Astros to walk J.D. Drew, to pitch to Marcus Giles, who only had two hits in the series, Houston decided to pitch to him.  Drew made them pay with a hit into right center that drove in the go ahead run.  Going into the bottom of the 9th, it was Smoltz time.  He had already pitched the 8th and had been been hit pretty hard but allowed no runs.  He came out gunning in the 9th.  After getting an out and giving up a couple of base runners, he put the nail in the coffin when the Astros hit into a 6-3 double play.  The Astros and Braves will play the finale of the series on Monday.  If the Cardinals win game 4 they will play at 7, if the Dodgers win, they will play at 3.

Going into the deciding game 5, many people could have believed that this game could go either way.  However, as a Braves fan since early in the streak and watching many of their games this season, I for one, was pretty sure of the outcome before the game ever began.  The Braves did not have a strong year this year.  Their record is actually very deceptive.  A large chunk of their wins came over their division counterparts.  Every team in the division self destructed going down the stretch and the Braves won the division and allot of their games by default.  I'm not trying to diminish what they did this year, but they never proved that they were a great team, which you have to be to win in the playoffs.  It is odd, they have a bunch of really good individual players, but almost all of them had down years and they never came together as a team.  They also don't make big plays and do horrible with runners in scoring position.  The Astros on the other hand have good chemistry and a will to win they showed down the stretch. 

The game began and immediately got off to a bad start as the Braves spotted the Astros 3 runs over the first two innings.  The Braves haven't scored allot of runs this year, so the three runs were about their limit.  So, in the forth, the Braves put a pair of runs on the board to get within a run at 3-2, but gave up an additional run in the fifth to go down 4-2.  Then the Astros decided to finish it.  They added 8 runs over the next two innings to demoralized the Braves and give them some momentum going into Wednesday's opening game of the NLCS against the Cardinals.  The two keys for Houston in the game were pitcher Russ Oswalt only giving up two runs in a big game and Beltran, belting two homeruns and tallying 5 RBI's.  Houston broke a streak of futility, by winning their first post season series in their eighth try.  The final score was 12-3.  Most importantly for the Braves in a season that was bittersweet, winning many more games than expected, but then loosing quickly in the playoffs, was the fate of short stop Rafael Furcal who will begin serving his time for a second drunk driving conviction Tuesday.