The World Series Pick: Rangers in Five

Let's make this as short and interesting as the Series will be, which is to say not very. Cliff Lee beats Tim Lincecum twice en route to the World Series MVP and a 5-year, $100 million contract from some MLB+ club. The Giants' defense finally comes back to bite them, the Ranger bats don't quit, and the entire thing disappears from the nation's conscience within a week. I'm also really not liking the prospects for Jonathan Sanchez and Matt Cain against the top-to-bottom production of the Ranger lineup.

Giants Fan is cheated out of even the Big Dramatic Loss that they are secretly craving to continue to make them special, seeing how similar fan bases have won in the past decade and become ordinary. And if you watch the games (I won't be, even if Fox Cablevision Armageddon ends), you'll have to endure countless shots of George Bush (either of them), Tom Hicks and Nolan Ryan, as if Ryan has suddenly become cute and cuddly in his old age, when the reality is that he was always a headhunting bully.

Oh, and we'll also get to hear a lot about how wonderful Pac Bell is. Not that any of that will stop the ratings for next week's SNF game (Pittsburgh at New Orleans) from being three times higher than Game 4, or the national sports media from spending most of their time talking about what the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and Mets will do in the offseason, rather than these games. They'll also talk about whether baseball is completely doomed in the long term due to the low low ratings of the current series. (Answer: Yes, but it's got nothing to do with the Series, and everything to do with the salary inequity that's slowly squeezing the life out of the exercise. Besides, we'd all rather watch football.)

So, um, woo baseball. And congrats to the Rangers and Giants for making it this far, and for solid players like Josh Hamilton, Buster Posey, Andres Torres, Ian Kinsler and others for getting to the big stage, and proving that big markets don't always go all the way. Too bad it won't be close. (And yes, this is also what I predicted prior to picking a Yankees-Phillies Series. So there's that.)