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It's over already? This is the best we can do? Without so much as a World Series whimper, the Colorado Rockies quietly crept out of the way of the juggernaut Red Sox in four games, two of which were blowouts and the other two not even as close as they seemed.
The Rockies will go down in baseball history as one of the most punchless teams to ever play the Fall Classic. Sure, the Rockies won 21 of 22 to force their way into the Series. And they did so with clutch hitting and comeback wins - they had 45 such victories in 2007 during the regular season alone.
Of course, they benefited from a NL West-leading Diamondbacks' team who were even more of an underdog than the Rockies. Coupled with a stunning four-game sweep of the Dodgers who had crept to within a few games of the D-Backs leading to the last week's of the season, and the Rockies were right there.
Then they faced an overrated Padres' team in the Wild Card playoff, followed by sweeps of weak Phillies' and D-Backs' teams, who inarguably made it to the playoffs due to a tepid field - the Phillies beat the division leading Mets seven times at the end of the season and won the division on the final day of play.
Predictably, when the Rockies made it to the WS and had a week to cool off, they would have more trouble with the Red Sox than they had for the previous two weeks. But they were wholly massacred. The Red Sox scored 29 runs off Rockie pitching while the Rockies managed just ten runs total. It is not clear, however, that the D-Backs, Padres, Phillies, Cubs or even Mets would have fared any better in a World Series than the Rockies did. Then again, they couldn't have done any worse.
But this seems to be the modus operandi for the National League of late. Most of the teams who have made it to the Series in the past 15 years are either under-qualified or simply get blasted out of the picture. The most formidable team of the 1990s was the Braves, who went to World Series in 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996 and 1999, only winning in '95.
Other 1990s teams to make the Series have been the flukey Reds (1990) who swept a formidable A's team that year, the more flukey Phillies (1993), the bought-and-paid-for then fire sold 1997 Marlins who won a championship, and the even more flukey 1998 Padres. That's all the National League had to show for itself that decade.
This decade has seen the never-was Mets, Diamondbacks (who won on the heels of hired guns Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling), Giants, Marlins (who shocked the world by beating the Yankees with then-unknown pitchers Josh Beckett and Brad Penny), Cardinals (swept by the Red Sox, then came from nowhere, winning only 83 regular season games, to take the 2006 title), and out-of-nowhere Astros. Ho-hum.
It wasn't always like this. In the 1970s and 1980s, the NL sent the likes of the powerful Reds, Dodgers, Phillies, Pirates, Mets and Cardinals to the Series - each of whom went at least two times and won at least once. The NL was the match of the junior circuit and sent nearly as capable teams every year.
Not so lately, as the NL boasts a bunch of All-Star game losses and also-rans or one-hit-wonders to show for their league. With the uncertainties of free agency and big spending, it is unclear when or even if the NL will regain its dominance.
