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| Playoff odds? They're ABOVE 9000! |
You only need to be in first place for one day. The last day.
It doesn't matter if you're 13 games out midseason. That you're starting a rotation made up of five rookies. That your best starting pitcher tested positive for performance-enhancing hollandaise sauce and got suspended for the stretch run. That your outfield was composed of guys who'd signed long-term leases in Pawtucket and guys who'd bombed in Kansas City and a guy who was better known for his workout video than anything else. That your midseason power upgrade came from a guy who looked like he was locked into a AAAA career path. That your bullpen was put together with duct tape and rejects and former minor league first basemen. That you play in a cavernous shell of a stadium that the city fathers have gutted for their cheating boyfriend of a football team, that your payroll is tiny and your location status is in limbo and your decade-ago success has been turned into a punchline by every jock-sniffing sports radio blatherer who decided in grade school that fractions were proof that math was just too damn hard.
That you're down, 5-0, in the last game, against the team that you've got to beat, against their big mid-season pitching pickup. That you're pulling guys out of the bullpen whom the announcers have never heard of because your starting pitcher imploded in the 3rd. That you're relying on guys named Moss and Smith and Donaldson.
A's 12, Rangers 5. This is why they play 162 games.
