Basbeall Update and “Knocking” Thom Brennaman

Two divisional series have gone to a decisive fifth game (the St. Louis Cardinals host the Pittsburgh Pirates tonight while tomorrow night, for the second straight year, the Detroit Tigers will play in Oakland vs the A’s in a decisive game). Both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox won their divisional series in four games.

The American League top seed, Red Sox, who finished five and a half games ahead of the Tampa Rays in the A.L. East, but had to beat them in a short series, did so, wrapping it up with a (3-1) win in game four last night. The Junior Circuit pennant winner will have the home field advantage in the World Series.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers won just their third post season series since Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser and company upset the favored Oakland Athletics in the 1988 World Series. In doing so the Dodgers handed the Atlanta Braves a 6th straight divisional series loss.

Atlanta also lost the “play in” game last year and worse in my opinion, have but one world title to show for 17 post season appearances in what will be 22 completed baseball seasons from (1991-2013). (There was an incomplete major league baseball season in 1994).

The Red Sox, as alluded to earlier, will have the home advantage vs the Tigers/A’s winner in the ALCS which will open Sunday night.

In my last post I “knocked” announcer Joe Buck and am grateful that the football/baseball doubleheader from Boston this Sunday will not have Buck on both games. He was allowed to do that once (in San Francisco) a few years back.

However, and you can call me envious and bitter, but the play by play man on football from the Boston area (it is an intriguing (5-0) New Orleans Saints at the (4-1) New England Patriots game) will be Thom Brennaman, who isn’t any better.

The sacrosanct New York Times, which once misspelled Wayne Gretzky’s name, ripped into Brennaman’s performance in a relatively recent, college football national title game.

A friend of mine had a succinct thought on Brennaman’s work. After enduring three hours plus of Brennaman on last week’s Eagles/Giants tilt, he told me, “the play by play action is an afterthought to his incessant talking.” When will these guys learn that less is more?!!

Meanwhile the Dodgers await the result of tonight’s decisive game in St. Louis to not only see whom they will play, but also the location of the game.

The L.A. manager, Don Mattingly, was very grateful, not only to have advanced, but to have avoided a plane trip to Atlanta, after the clinching victory vs Atlanta.

Toward that end, he had started ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw on three days rest. The Dodgers went from a roughly three to two to a five to two favorite in the final game vs Atlanta.

Luckily (for them) they won, as an all time clutch player, Juan Uribe, delivered the big blow. Now there is no decisive game tonight in Atlanta with Kershaw unavailable to start. That would have been the situation had the Dodgers lost game four.

Now Mattingly and company will root for the Pirates, who exactly 39 years ago lost at Dodger Stadium in the final game of the NLCS, so they avoid the plane and open the NLCS at home. By the way, all this talk of planes evokes memories of Herve Villechaize.

If the Pirates win tonight and are the Dodgers’ NLCS opponent, L.A. will be large game, and series, favorites–especially with Kershaw starting in the series opener in Los Angeles.

If the Cardinals win, (they are a 3 to 2 choice tonight), the Dodgers with Kershaw starting game one, but on the road, will still be favored–but by not nearly that wide a margin in both the NLCS opener and for the series.