For those of you who don?t follow baseball, the Red Sox clinched a playoff spot last night by winning the wild card in the American League. To recap Major League Baseball, there are two leagues, the American League and National League, and each league has three divisions, East, Central and West. For the post season, or as some call it, the playoffs, each division has one winner. So in the American League, the East, Central and West each have a winner. In 1995, Major League Baseball started a ?wild card? winner, a team with the best record who did not win a division. The wild card can come from any division. Sometimes, the wild card winner has a better record than one of the division champions, an interesting reality of baseball.
Anyway, this year the American League division winners were as follows:
West ? Oakland because Seattle couldn?t buy a win in the last 6 weeks of the season
Central ? Minnesota because KC blew a 20-0 start and the White Sox couldn?t beat Minnesota the last two weeks of the season.
East ? Yankees of course.
So that left the wild card slot open. Well, as you can predict from the title of this entry, the Red Sox won the wild card last night after beating Baltimore. A couple of things.
- ?HOO!! HOO!! ALL ABOARD!!? That is the sound of the Red Sox bandwagon leaving the station. All fans who jumped off in May, come on back. It?s about to leave the station.
- After the game last night, one drunken Red Sox fan (do I really need to describe a Red Sox fan as drunken, it's pretty much assumed) said this ?We won thuh wild cahd race!! Now we hahv three gahmes to win the divishuhn!! We cahn dooo it!!? When told that the Yankees won the AL East earlier in the week, the fan assaulted the reporter.
- After the last out in the game, the Sox celebrated like the Syosset Science Middle School Engineering Club winning Battle Bots. Give. Me. A. Break. And T-Shirts that say Wild Card winners??? HA. You have got to be joking. I know the Sox haven?t been in the post season since 99, but let?s settle down a little. They were on the field hoopin? and hollerin?, carrying on like they just won the World Series.
- Todd Jones, an idiot of a reliever who ticked off the Boston sports media with comments he made in his Sporting News column earlier this year said this last night, "But how could I not go out there and thank them? They were with us all year. There were times they could have shot us and they didn't? Wh..?? Hu..?? They could have shot you?? They WOULD have shot you Todd, any one of you, if they were allowed to bring guns into the stadium. This is Boston. You blow one lead, and buh bye. You win one in the 9th, and they still find something wrong.
- Not sure why last night's celebration surprised me. After all, this is the same town that had a parade and celebration when Colorado won the Stanley Cup, because a fan favorite left the Bruins to play there. This is the same town that had a parade in 1986 to celebrate LOSING the World Series. Maybe they?ll have a Wild Card parade ending at Government Center.
- Following the game last night, young Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein went against tradition in waiting until the season is over and announced the winner of the Thomas A. Yawkey Award for Red Sox team MVP, ?We?d like to present this year's team most valuable player award to the Seattle Mariners".