THE NEXT EPISODE: So now that the two teams that have gone a combined 180 years without winning a championship have both been eliminated, we're left with a World Series between… the Yankees, who last won it all three years ago, and the Marlins, who were world champions six years ago but bring back just one (1) player from that 1997 team, Jeff Conine.
It's tempting to root for Florida as the small-market underdog, but keep two things in mind: during the season, and for the last few years, the Marlins have been as well known for their perpetually near-empty stadium as anything else. And there are likely more fans of the Yankees in the state of Florida than there are fans of the Marlins (I haven't seen raw numbers, but I'm waiting for Florida to roll around on Sports Illustrated's "Sports in America" survey for confirmation). Hell, the owner of the Yankees even lives in Florida- while the owner of the Marlins ("art dealer" Jeffrey Loria) lives in New York.
The Yankees will probably the win the Series and championship #27, but don’t count the Marlins out- they also looked considerably inferior to both the Giants and Cubs on paper, and we all know what happened there. There's only one given for this series: very very low TV ratings, undoing the good done work done by probably the best LCS round in baseball history. So at least Commissioner Dickhead will suffer at least a little this postseason.
At any rate, now that the Yanks and Marlins are playing, Don Zimmer can pick on someone his own age- namely, 72-year-old Florida skipper Jack McKeon.