C'est La Vie say the old folks...

The beauty of the baseball playoffs, especially the first round, comes in their brevity.

Take the series sweeps we just saw. Two were beyond shocking, the other, totally predictable, if slightly frustrating to watch.

The Dodgers, a team that for eight days couldn't get the single win it needed to finally put its division to bed, managed to defeat two of the best three starting pitchers in the National League in two days, while sending out major question marks from their own rotation. Meanwhile, the best hitter on the planet, Albert Pujols, is made to look like Nick Punto for three games, and Matt Holliday, a man who's about to make $120 million this winter, gets to live on in the nightmares of every Cardinal fan for years to come. St. Louis was the best team in the National League in the second half, and the margin was not close. Yet the Dodgers, the best team of the first half, crushed them.

The Angels have been the wholly owned property of the Red Sox since the tragedy of Donnie Moore in '86. They were blitzed in 04, 07, and again last year. To be frank, I expected them to win a game, perhaps two, in this series. What I didn't count on was Jared Weaver beating the best postseason starter of his generation, then the Sox wasting a most unexpected effort from Clay Buckholz, and having a pitcher who hadn't given up a postseason run in his career give up three, all with two outs. Five consecutive Angels reached base after the second out off of Papelbon, who may well have pitched his last game as a Red Sock.

Perhaps it's fitting then, that the Yankees beat the Twins in the way they always do. Doing everything "the right way," is great, until you run into folks who do the same thing, and have more talent than you do. The series really was the proverbial knife to a gunfight scenario. The Yankees flicked their wrists to send balls out, the Twins had to scrape and scrape. The minute Punto ran through the stop signal, the series was over. I'll admit, I didn't quite know who to root for, but frankly, game three was a no lose situation. Either the Yanks would lose or that G-d-forsaken building, with it's funny hops and baseball colored roof, can finally be simply an unpleasant memory.