bjournal::juxtapoz

I don’t want to overstate this, but I think that for anybody who is even remotely interested in sports, this is THE game to watch.

On paper, it is simply a match-up of the two top American League teams (sorry Angels, you have been proven unworthy) playing the game to go to the World Series. Pretty standard October intrigue, really. But just beneath the surface lurks something quite a bit more interesting.

The (Devil) Rays have had a season for the ages, winning 97 games with a team whose average age seems to be around 23, whose total payroll is $44 million, and whose memory doesn’t stretch back as far as a year ago when they lost 96 games, let alone to two nights ago when they were seven outs away and seven runs up from a trip to the World Series. This is a team who is guided by a man in Buddy Holly glasses and who, by all accounts, plays ball the right way (excepting those hideous mohawks). Their only real flaw is that they don’t believe in magic.

The (Red) Sox have had a pretty standard year for them (lately). They won 95 games with a team whose average age seems to be around 32, whose total payroll is $133 million, and whose memory has shifted from instant replays of Bill Buckner in ‘86 to instant replays of Big Papi in ‘04. A team guided by a man with little to know hair above his neck, but whose team is about as gritty as a nice Southern breakfast. Their only real charm is the ability to conjure up the most spectacular magic act since their last one.

The Rays have a slugger who weighs about a buck fifty and who seems ready to tie or break the post-season home run record, with their pretty-boy third baseman right behind him (no, not $-Rod), while the Sox have a slugger, who actually looks like a slugger, who just hit is first home run of the postseason and has five RBIs, with their normal third baseman out of the series due to injury.

Last night, two top-shelf pitchers had their worst “Big Games” of their careers, but the guy without the “Big Game” moniker, just with the deserved reputation, dominated. Tonight, it is just the match-up of a cancer survivor and your standard 24-year-old Californian who married his high-school sweetheart and had a child right after graduation.

Over the last two nights, the best fielding team in baseball has given up huge errors to keep their opponents alive, while the wily veterns with a patchwork infield have played flawlessly.

The ultra-cerebral coach for the Rays, Maddon, seemed to be having his head toyed with as the Red Sox brutally dissected a surprise hit-and-run (so surprised that right before it happened, the announcers said that it wasn’t really a running situation) so effortlessly, that they probably could have done it with their eyes closed.

In short, this is the classic match-up. It is David vs. Goliath, except that each team is David and each team is Goliath. The Rays are the Davids of the financial axis: can a team with a $44 million roster beat a team with a $132 millon one (note: in three years, the current roster of the Rays will be making more than $132), but the Sox are the Davids of the execution and magic axis: can a team be more than the sum of its parts, or will it eventually succomb to numbers and youthful forgetfulness?