Baseball, as good as it gets

Like no other season I can remember, this year’s playoffs have been packed with absolutely amazing games, and we haven’t even gotten to the Series yet.
Boston captured the back-door sweep with a thankfully low-stress 10-3 win over the Yankees.
How incredible is that? Back-to-back extra inning triumphs, then two grueling road victories, all while facing elimination?
David Ortiz swings between monster-defeating homers and a Gonzo bloop. Johnny Damon waits ‘til game 7, then decides he came to play. And Curt Shilling pulls a Willis Reed (more apt than Kirk Gibson here, because Gibby had just one at-bat, while Shilling threw 7 innngs), bleeding through his sock and gritting through his pain to shame the multi-millionaire club in pinstripes (to be fair, the Sox as well as every other baseball team is a club of multi-millionaires, but the Yanks just make so damn much more).
That seals it for me. I'm Red Sox all the way this year.
Of course, when a team consists entirely of scruffy, strange-looking guys, it's hard not to be a fan in the first place. It's hard to tell if Johnny Damon is a mountain man or a hippie, and Millar seems to grow facial hair as if in response to a cruel dare.
Player by player, the Yanks come out as these GQ wannabees, fresh from the pedicurist or hair salon, who hardly resemble ball players, while the Sox can't seem to bother shaving because they're spending so damn much time being scrappy.
Curt Shilling pulls the perfect Don Drysdale Unshaven Intimidation trick (hate either one if you want, but the first description I could possibly think of would simply be "competitor").
Monday’s extra-inning superfest took so damn long the extra innings alone nearly overlapped a top-notch pitcher’s duel in the N.L.
But forget about the Astros. I can't stand Jeff Kent because he looks more like a cop than any player in the game. A crooked cop.
As an enthusiastic hired gun Beltran gets my thumbs up and Biggio/Bagwell/Berkman are all great ballplayers, but I hate Houston. They should still have to play at Enron Park for accepting the damn dirty cash in the first place.
St. Louis is hard to hate cause their hitters are all as focused on defense as they are at the plate. Pre-playoffs I'd have loved a Cubs-Giants series in the N.L. Early playoffs I was hoping for Angels-Twins in the A.L.
Now that Boston has sealed it, here’s hoping for the Cardinals continue the home-victor trend in the N.L. and take game seven. And that ought to be a good Series.