Playoffs?!?! Are You Kiddin' Me?

Looks like the Cubs' coronation has hit a few snags. The cursed Cubbies dropped the first two games of their divisional series to Joe Torre's Dodgers and now the faithful are sitting on pins and needles as the teams head to L.A. for Game Three.

What's interesting to me isn't necessarily that the Dodgers are easily handling the best team in the National League, rather it's the reaction by the fans. In Philadelphia, the fans have been going crazy since the first pitch. In Chicago, it was like they either viewed the first series as a formality or they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was through the latter lens that Mets fans watched the final week of the regular seasons. Needless to say, it didn't work out too well for them.

Next theme for the playoffs: Whatever happened to good pitching beating good hitting? Yeah, Cole Hamels and John Lester were great, but established aces Carlos Zambrano, C.C. Sabathia and John Lackey all tasted defeat after nearly immaculate regular season performances.

It's not like they're the only All-Stars to come up lame so far. Vlad Guerrero's baserunning blunder may have cost the Angels a big inning in Game One against the Red Sox. And Alfonso Soriano continues to abide by his unwritten contract that he must swing at every pitch in the dirt. In October, it's small things like that that stack up and bite you.

On the positive side of things, Evan Longoria of the Rays made his bid for Mr. October status with 2 HR in his first 2 AB in a 6-4 win over the White Sox and Manny Ramirez hit another HR last night, his second in the first two games against the Cubs. Speaking of Manny, if you have, oh, three days and four nights, a six-pack of energy drinks, take a look at Bill Simmons' Magnus Opus to Ramirez.

What do you think? Is this legit? Or does it just read like some love letter designed to defend a secret crush? (If you believe it's the former though, you have to explain to me what the first section has to do with anything.)

Can't Cheat Death

As the saying goes, you can't cheat death, something that Al Davis (top) — who sure looks like Death (bottom) — reinforced yesterday by firing Lane Kiffin. Davis claimed that Kiffin was damaging his team by disparaging the Raiders, and Davis, to the media.

Davis axed Kiffin, whom Davis had personally selected to fill the head coaching position, over the phone Tuesday morning. He also took it to the extreme by firing Kiffin "with cause," meaning that Davis will not pay Kiffin the remainder of his contract if the firing stands up in court.

Congratulations, Al. You just made your head coaching job really desirable. Not only are you so fickle that the new coach will never know when he's about to be canned, but he won't even be sure he'll be paid for his effort. Good work indeed. And you wonder why the Raiders are 20-64 since 2003 ...

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Congratulations to the Chicago White Sox on winning the American League Central Division by beating the Twins, 1-0, in Game 163 of the 2008 season. The White Sox beat three different teams on three consecutive days in order to make the postseason — their season finale against Cleveland, a makeup game on Monday against the Tigers and Tuesday's play-in tiebreaker against the Twins.

The Sox must be pretty gassed heading into Thursday's division series opener against the Rays in Tampa, but don't bet against them. Remember the Rockies played about 176 innings against the Padres in a play-in game last season. All they did was make it to the World Series.

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GM Brian Cashman was retained by the New York Yankees with a three-year deal yesterday, meaning he'll be the one to make the sweeping changes promised by Hank "The Bank" Steinbrenner last month.

Whatever moves the Yankees make, I hope they steer clear of injury-prone pitchers Ben Sheets and A.J. Burnett. In fact, someone ought to send Cashman a picture of Carl Pavano for his desk just to remind him. After signing Pavano in 2004, the pitcher was so consistently dinged up that the New York Post took to calling him "American Idle." Just having an opportunity to watch Pavano pitch in pinstripes was a rarity unto itself, with starts almost as scarce as Raider wins over that time. (Oh, burn!)

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The Washington Capitals are close to finalizing their roster for the 2008-09 season as they try to defend their Southeast Division title. A few interesting notes from their training camp, where I spent this past weekend:

• The team returns Chris Clark and Michael Nylander this season after both missed significant time due to injury last year. Both looked smooth and strong on the ice during practice sessions and had a combined seven points in preseason games heading into Monday night's contest against New Jersey.

"They look good," Head Coach Bruce Boudreau said this weekend. "They're fabulously conditioned athletes anyway. It makes us more dangerous, that's for sure."

That's potentially a huge understatement. Nylander led the team with 26 assists and had 37 points in 40 games last season before missing the remainder of it with a shoulder injury. A year earlier he tallied 83 points playing for the New York Rangers.

Clark is just a year removed from a 30 goal season and, depending on how Boudreau crafts his lines will skate with either Nicklas Backstrom (55 assists in his rookie year in 2008), Nylander or Sergei Fedorov at center. He'll have some good chances to repeat that 30 goal feat this season.

• Defenseman John Carlson made a strong impression on the Caps this training camp before being sent down this past weekend. The 18-year old didn't have much of a shot at making this team, not when WHL MVP Karl Alzner might not even make the cut (... though I still think he will).

Moral of the story though? Ever since the rebuild began in 2004 the team made a commitment to draft high-caliber defensemen. Their reward is now tremendous depth at the blue line. It's not the equal of the defensive corps of the Red Wings, for example, at least not yet. But these young defensemen should only improve with age and if the team can retain the best of them: Mike Green, Shaone Morrisonn, Jeff Schultz, Alzner and Carlson among that crowd — the Caps corps projects to rival some of the league's top blue lines down the road.

• Chris Bourque, a former second-round pick by the Caps and the son of hockey legend Ray Bourque, is making it hard for Boudreau to send him back to Hershey for another season. With two goals and two assists heading into Monday's game against New Jersey, Bourque was tied for the team lead in preseason points.

It looks like it will come down to Bourque and Boudreau favorite Quintin Laing for that final roster spot. My guess is that if Boudreau thinks the third or fourth line needs more offensive firepower, Bourque will get the nod. If he needs more grit, Laing — who is never afraid to throw his body in front of a slap shot — will be the guy.

• During his days playing in hockey's minor leagues, the affable Boudreau spent some time as an extra in the cult-hit hockey film "Slap Shot," starring Paul Newman. On Sunday, a day after Newman's passing, I asked Boudreau if he had any memories from working with the now-departed actor.

"To me, it's just a sad thing because he was a great humanitarian," Boudreau said. "When we saw him in 'Slap Shot,' he was a superstar actor at the top of his game, but he treated everyone so cool. We did a screening one night with George Roy Hill, him, my roommate Dave Hanson and I tagged along with him because I had no friends. And he [Paul] turned around and said to me, "You know, I just did 'Judge Roy Bean' for the money, but this is going to be a great movie.'

"I don't know, that's one line, over 30 years ago, that I will never forget because it was from Paul Newman. So it's a sad day for the world."

Saturday Upsets Sink BCS Teams

I'm out of town doing some reporting this weekend and only sporadically get Internet access, so this will likely be the only post until I get back on Tuesday, but I'll have some good stuff when I return.

Saturday was defined by underdogs leaving their mark on the BCS landscape. For those that think the existing BCS system is about as dumb as a submarine with a screen door, Saturdays like yesterday are beautiful. This week, USC, Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin and Wake Forest all went down. That likely means that Oklahoma and LSU are likely the ones driving that screen-door submarine to the BCS Title game right now.

Of course, LSU will still have to survive its rugged schedule in the SEC. And edging Mississippi State at home by only 10 points on Saturday wasn't a very convincing statement that the Tigers can do it.

I am desperately hoping that by the end of the season all of the top SEC teams have two intra-conference losses, making it extremely difficult to put one of them into the title game over a one-loss or undefeated team from the Pac-Ten, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East or Mountain West. Of course, the BCS will have to because the SEC is hands down the best conference in the country.

If the SEC gets snubbed you can bet its teams will start to think about leaving the BCS. On the other hand, any undefeated team will have every right to be upset at being overlooked. That's going to be one heck of a headache for those that run the bowl system. It's also one that is easily solved by a bracket.

Chaos, don't you love it!