116. Predictions Guaranteed To Be Made

It is time, once again, for baseball playoffs, a most hallowed time. Likewise, it is time for me to predict stuff and not really expect any of it to be correct.

I'll start with a couple of easy ones. I predict that neither the Cardinals, the Royals, nor the Yankees, (sorry Gary) will win the World Series. What about teams actually IN the playoffs, you say? Glad you asked.


Alright, well, the playoffs have gotten started and so I have given myself a bit of an advantage there. The Dodgers are playing the Team That Shall Not Be Named and I'll pick the Dodgers to win that series. They have already won Game 1 and lead in Game 2. The other National League Series features the Phillies and the Brewers and Philly has a 2-0 lead in that series, so I'll be brave and take them to finish off Milwaukee.

That leaves me with the LA Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies in the NL Championship Series and I'll take the Dodgers. I like Joe Torre as a manager in October and Manny Ramirez, late of Boston but now of LA, can carry a team for weeks at a time. In fact, I kind of like them to win the whole deal. They sort of have that 'playing well at the right time' vibe to me.

In the American League, the LA Angels are playing the Boston Red Sox and Boston won Game 1. LA is very strong and I like their manager, Mike Soscia, but I'm headed somewhere with my predictions, so I'll pick Boston. In the other series, the Tampa Bay Rays have made post-season play for the first time and they are facing the Chicago White Sox. Tampa leads 1-0 after winning today and I will pick them to win this series in five games.

So that would set up an AL East showdown for the AL pennant and in that matchup, I'll take the Red Sox over the Rays.

Which would give me a Dodgers-Red Sox World Series and, as I hinted before, I'll pick the Dodgers here. I'm looking for Manny Ramirez to face his old team and Torre, former Yankee manager, to face New York's arch foe, Boston. And I like both of them to get their new team a title and, as long as we're dreaming, let's have them win Game 7 in Boston. With Manny hitting 2 homers.

Since you asked.

OK - This may look horrible, but why not try?

Because I'm interested in these things, I set up a Logo Tournament using the baseball playoff teams' logos and created a bracket and I'm going to try to post it. The graphics really broke down, but, let's see, shall we?

Well, well, well. I posted it and it's ugly. Anyway, I like the Red Sox' logo best of the eight is the basic result here. The head-to-head match-ups differed from my "on-field" predictions in only two ways: Rays-White Sox and Red Sox-Dodgers. That's kind of interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if my predictions were influenced by uniforms and logos.

It could be worse. There could be money on it.