MLB

The two best teams in baseball, most home runs and runs scored in each league, plus one stat which surprised me: both the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies led their leagues in stolen base percentage, with each having an over 80 percent success rate.

Power and speed, plus a lethal starting pitcher at the top of the rotation for both teams.

The Yankees will win in five games, after taking a 3-0 series lead.

Starting Pitching

Finally, after 4,860 games from 30 teams, we have the World Series that we had all hoped for. We have the two juggernauts of baseball. The two cities, separated by 26 exits of Turnpike through the great state of New Jersey, will indeed give us the World Series that we could only wish for at the beginning of the season.

The 2009 World Series has arrived after a long and quite interesting season. Along with the arrival of the Fall Classic comes the World Series buzz and debates on who's got the edge. The Phillies and the Yankees make great cases for themselves, respectively.

The New York Yankees are trying to get back to their previous state of baseball dominance. Yankees like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte hope to end this decade the way they started it, with a World Series Championship.

The World Series mercifully begins tonight and what better way to prepare than to inundate sports fans with predictions? What kind of sports writer would I be if I didn’t throw my hat into the prediction ring?

Exactly.

So let’s go ahead and compare the Yankees and Phillies position by position to find out who the better team is and, thus, who will win the World Series.

We should have known.

Back in late May, during Memorial Day weekend, as people were lighting up the BBQ, cuing up the music, and opening up swimming pools, a series was being played in Yankee Stadium.

In a rare and intriguing interleague match up, the world champion Philadelphia Phillies paid a visit to the new Yankee Stadium to play the Bronx Bombers. At the time, both teams had identical records coming in; the Phillies were 23-17, and struggling to take off on the 2009 season.

In fact, the Mets were in first place at that time!

The two best teams in baseball will meet in the World Series, and oddly enough each is similar to the other. 

Both have dynamite, strike-at-any-moment lineups loaded with former MVPs and future Hall-of-Famers. Both have lefty aces that were on the Cleveland Indians only a season ago. Both have inconsistent fireballers who, if on their game, are unhittable. 

So, I’ve been trying this week to actually write some insightful columns and conduct some interviews, both for the folks over at CBS and here. In addition to that, I’ve been accumulating a tremendous amount of notes that I’ve slipped into various columns or interviews.

However, not everything made the cut, or fit, or whatever. So, just for the sake of having everything in one place, or in case this is the only Web site you go to on your Internet machine, let’s review the events from the last few days: