"God bless Willie Mays."

gWhen my first wife came out of the anesthesia following the birth of our son, those were the first words she said. I'd uttered that plea so often that it was ingrained in her memory. Willie, the greatest baseball player of all time, was, and is, my favorite baseball player ever.

For that, and lots of other reasons, I should have been rooting for the San Francisco Giants to win the World Series this year and, in the end, I was. Right after the Giants had eliminated The Phillies, though, I was in no mood to to take side at all. I eventually began considering the Rangers, who have (still) never won anything, and because I still had a warm spot in my heart for Cliff Lee.

Lee proceeded to turn that ice cold with his "I didn't mind seeing them lose" comment, which was perfect reasonable from his perspective, but not something I needed to hear. So I started the Series a little ambivalent but essentially wanting the Giants to win. They proceeded to conquer my heart completely with their fantastic pitching and their git-'er-done play.

The final decider was The Decider himself. When Texas trotted out Bush 41 and Bush 43 before Game Four and offered up camera shots of mean old Babs in the stands, her eyes and expression revealing her deepest conviction as they had--the men in this family are wimps--I was all in