Cinderella Stories, and National League Races

The National League races have come steaming down to the final weekend of the baseball season, and will most likely be pretty clear once the day is over. There are still some stories to follow, though.

The Colorado Rockies are hanging on by a thread after last night's loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks at home. With the win and the Met loss, the D'Backs clinched a playoff birth. That left Colorado 3 games behind Arizona in the divison with 2 to play. The weekend looks quite bleak now for the Rockies as their fate is not entirely in their own hands. They trail San Diego by 2 games in the Wild Card race with 2 more to go. They must finish off Arizona and get help from Milwaukee in order to face a one game playoff with San Diego on Monday.

Colorado was baseball's hottest team, the Phillies being a close second, when they swept Los Angeles and were heading home for the final series. Any loss at this point is a huge opportunity missed, but the loss was magnified for Colorado as their ace, Jeff Francis, was beat at home. They will have to make up the remaining ground without their best pitcher going back to the mound.

It has been plenty of fun to watch this team, full of young players and overachievers, come together late in the second half to make a run at the playoffs. The team plays great baseball as a whole, and more importantly, they play the game the right way. Every guy on the field hustles and comes to the ballpark to win. That attitude is easily visible when this core of players puts it out on the line on a nightly basis. Much of this credit should go to manager Clint Hurdle for getting his nucleus of players to believe that they can win and motivating them to come out and play hard each night.

If this is where the road ends for Colorado, and hopefully not, it has been a pleasure watching them compete and big things are expected come April, 2008.

For every lost hope in baseball, there is hope gained somewhere else.

The Philadelphia Phillies did the improbable last night, at least for one day, when they capitalized on the Mets loss to take over sole possession of first place in the NL East.

Cole Hamels took the mound and put the Phillies on his back by turning in a masterful performance, clearly stating himself as the ace of this staff. The Phillies have been the most exciting team to watch lately, because nobody thought they could even come close to doing what they have done. It is enough of a treat to watch a team play great baseball for an extended period of time, but to watch one who grinds out everyday and does it while making a run at the divison title is the sole purpose of why I get up in the morning to watch baseball.

Baseball is a sport played in dirt for a reason. The players, and the teams consisting of these players, who bring a relentless will to the game and find a way to make the routine plays and grind out basehits are the ones often rewarded. Baseball is not a flashy game. Of course, the 500 foot homeruns are nice, but that is not what the game is built upon. It is built upon momentum and players putting consecutive streaks of good at-bats together.

The Phillies are the epitome of a grinding team, one who is not afraid to dirty up the uniform and play hard-nosed baseball. Nobody every said winning had to be pretty. Rarely does it come by sitting up there and swinging from the heals and hoping for the best. Look for the at-bats such as a 10 pitch walk, or a broken bat single followed by a stolen base. Those are the sequence of events that get the game rolling. Most importantly, that is how teams win in the postseason.

The Mets have already won today, so Philidelphia needs to win to keep pace and keep their one game advantage going into the final day of the regular season. San Diego is locked up in a good one with Milwaukee. Hopefully, the National League Wild Card won't be decided until tomorrow, with Colorado and San Diego fighting it out. Who knows what will happen in the NL East. That race has been so crazy, its not even worth speculating about what may be. Stay tuned.