Stop it.
There are no sure things in any sport, baseball especially. The Atlanta Braves used to have this habit of winning more than 100 regular season games and failing to win the World Series. Wild Card entrants won every World Series from 2002 to 2004. The St. Louis Cardinals won 105 games in 2004 and 100 in 2005, then snuck into the 2006 postseason with an 83-78 record and won the whole thing.
That’s no excuse for denying the fact that these two teams, the Red Sox and the Phillies, are the best in baseball in 2011. Include the New York Yankees in the discussion, and, in separating the top three from the rest of the major leagues, it’s not even close.
You’re No. 1. Own it.
“Wait,” a Boston fan is surely saying. “How can any Phillies fan in his right mind not be enjoying the heck out of this season? When Roy Oswalt goes down with a back injury and the team hardly misses a beat, that’s special.”
“Well,” a Philly fan might respond, “if we had your offense, we’d feel more confident. The Red Sox have six everyday players with an OPS over .800 and Josh Beckett and Jon Lester may be as good a one-two punch as any American League team can boast in a short series.”
It’s funny, because in each city, there are fans who assume it’s all roses in the other city while they’re getting paranoid about their own dream team. My friends from the City of Brotherly Love tell me they love their Phils, but they’re worried about the free-falling Giants, the offensively challenged Braves and the above-average but hardly elite Brewers. Folks in Beantown swear they love the Sox’ odds but are far from confident about how they’d fair against the one-trick pony Tigers, the Yankees’ patchwork rotation and the Angels, who still start Vernon Wells and his .205 batting average.
An ESPN baseball analyst from Philadelphia last week put the Phillies and Braves roughly equal in his power rankings. A Philadelphia Daily News columnist called the Phillies’ best-in-the-majors record “deceptive.” It’s quite a contrast from a Boston Herald reporter who wrote the Phillies should “scare” the Red Sox.
The grass is always greener on — nevermind, we all know the saying.
Nobody is saying the Red Sox and Phillies are destined to meet in the fall classic. All teams, even the best ones, have flaws. Warts and all, though, there’s no denying the birthplaces of the United States currently house the best teams in baseball. Stop the nervous fidgeting and enjoy it.
