The usual suspects

It's not a done deal yet, but it sure is looking likely. That being which two teams are going to wind up playing in the World Series.

Like most any other playoff that doesn't include the Golden State Warriors, the 2017 Major League post-season was a crap shoot. Anybody could get hot and win. After all, teams had to be pretty good just to qualify.

It would have been nice to see new blood in the Fall Classic. Teams like the Minnesota Twins, Arizona Diamondbacks, Houston Astros, and Colorado Rockies come to mind. When's the last time any team from their respective towns, or even states, won a professional championship?  It's been a while.

The Boston Redsox broke their jinx a scant few years ago. The Cubbies dispatched a 100+ year monkey from their backs just last year. Even Cleveland had the Cavaliers bring home a recent title. They're good for a while.

No surprise the Washington Nationals choked like dogs, because that's what they always do. Besides, given all the other goings on, who has fond feelings towards anything DC right now?

The Cleveland Indians currently have the longest drought in baseball. They were oh-so-close to winning it all last year. But again, it's tough to begrudge the Cubbies the way things turned out. Alas, the Tribe was swept aside this year by the dreaded Bronx Bombers of the Bronx, sometimes known as the NY Yankees.

And in the National League, the LA Dodgers seem to be playing more like they did at the beginning of the season than during their mid-summer slump.

At the time of this writing, the Yankees lead the Houston Astros 3 games to 2. True, Houston will pitch ace Justin Verlander in Game Six, but no pitcher is ever a lock. It certainly looks like the Yankees are on a roll. It would be surprising to see the Stros come back and win two in a row.

The Dodgers have the Cubs on life support, leading them 3 zip. Oops. Make that 3-1 but, still, with that Kershaw guy still to come around again, does anybody really think the Chitown north-siders can win three in a row against the LA-LA-Landers? Not I.

So what will that leave? The Dodgers and Yankees in the World Series. No doubt the league and TV folks would love such a scenario. It's the two largest markets in the country. Money will pour in by the super-tanker full.

Thing is, while millions of their locals on the west and east coast gear up for such a showdown from the old days, many millions more in between will collectively say "dammit". Anybody but THOSE guys again.

Too bad the folks in between don't get a vote. Like in the last presidential election, these huge markets were swept aside by the common man/woman. Yeah, the result of that isn't turning out so hot, to say the least, lord help us, but it was refreshing to see a changing of the old guard, if for only a little while.

So c'mon Houston and Chicago. You can still pull this off. Spare us the indignity of having to watch the Dodgers and Yankees battling for supremacy once again.

There is hope.

[This is an age-old theme with Detroit Lions' fans and your garden variety lemmings. Generation after generation just doesn't know any better and likely never will. Alas, poor doomed devils, but I digress.]

In the immortal words of one Tom Brady -- LET'S GO!!!!  If he and the Patriots could come back from a 25 point deficit to win the Super Bowl just last February, you guys can pull this out of your hats -- or perhaps another of your bodily orifices as well.