(I am not even pretending that the 2002 postseason even happened. Every scrub who ever wore an Angels uniform came of the bench to hit .700 against the Yanks' arsenal of hurlers. I think Bobby Grich went 17-for-20 with 12 HRs or something.)

Anyway, the team to beat this year, according to a lot of "experts," is the A's, a franchise people have been expecting to take the next step for the past 10 years. They couldn't beat the Yankees with Jason Giambi in 2000 and 2001, and they couldn't beat the Twins (a team the Yankees' Triple-A team could have defeated) last season with the AL's MVP and Cy Young Award winner. And then the A's lost their manager, so I don't really see what the fuss it about, but I digress.

Even Sports Illustrated is picking the A's to win their World Series, which is fine with me. SI hasn't gotten a prediction right since they said Shaquille O'Neal would score a lot of points for the Lakers. The biggest problem I have with SI is that they put the Yanks on the cover of its baseball preview edition, after two straight years of cursing them with the same distinction. (The Yanks never graced the baseball preview issue in the championship years of 1996, and 1998-2000.) So thanks for nothing to those assholes. Now I might have to suffer through some broken-bat bullshit bloop to end the World Series, a la 2001, or seeing guys named Eckstein and Spezio hit career homers Nos. 1 through 20 in a single playoff series against New York.

Around the horn: Playboy picks the A's over Diamondbacks, Sportsline.com's Scott Miller says Cardinals over A's and Maxim Online has the Yanks and Astros at 1-2.

Other Baseball Links:

ESPN.com Page 2: World Series Is Sports' Best Tournament — When your team is in it — and mine usually is — the baseball playoffs are thrilling, the drama in close games just builds and builds. And there's no coming down from the high. What a great feeling to see your team win a big postseason game and get to do it all over again in 24 hours.

Baseball's State-of-the-Art Stats — Slate examines the fancy formulas general managers and agents use to assess players' worth.

Ranking the MLB Managers — Charlie McCarthy, a guy I used to work with, rates Bobby Cox as the best manager in baseball. I understand how incredible the Braves' regular seasons have been over the past decade, but I wouldn't trade Joe Torre for that guy in 100 years, which is how long its gonna take for the Braves to win another World Series.

Play MLB.com's Beat the Streak — Select one player every day to get a hit. Pick correctly for 56 straight days and win season tickets to the team of your choice. Log on to this site 56 straight days and watch your sex life disapper.

Playboy Interviews David Wells — The boated Yankees left-hander calls his assailant from last year's diner skirmish "just some drunk idiot who had a problem that night." Wells, of course, was also wasted and abusive to 9-1-1 operators. Sounds to me like there were two idiots present.

The Pinstriped Bible — Nineteen commandments on baseball strategy and evaluation, including why Mariano Duncan's 1996 season (when he hit .340) wasn't so great and why no closer is worth $5 million more than another.