I hate the Cubs.

Always.

As most of you who have read this for any period of time know, I'm a Milwaukee Brewer fan. I've been a Brewer fan since 1980. And as lean as the last 26 years have been, I stuck with them -- didn't abandon them for some other team like some people do when the team of their childhood struggles for a few decades.

Even so, it pained me to have to 'root' for the Cubs to win some games against the Mets during the last week of the season so Milwaukee could get into the wild card race.

Last night was good for me on two fronts. The Brewers, who had to dig out of an 0-2 hole the last time they were in the playoffs, won a game. (Realistically, I don't expect the Brew Crew to reach the World Series, I'm just glad they broke the playoff drought.) And the hated Cubs got swept out of the playoffs by a Dodger team NOBODY picked to advance. And the Dodgers beat the Cubs in every single aspect of the game. Humbled them, broke their spirit, embarassed them, treated them like Cubs should be treated.

So today, if you're a shell-shocked Cubs fan, hahahahahahahahahahaha.

And you can say whatever you want in return, but you have to live with this: The Brewers weren't a favorite to win the World Series, and the Brewers aren't getting swept out of the playoffs by what most everyone thought was an inferior team.

The World Series is almost upon us.

In one corner, we've got the team that, absent the New York Yankees, has the highest payroll in baseball, without a care in the world about how much its spending. In the other corner, we've got a team with a lower-tier payroll and a national profile that's non-existent.

While I've been a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers since I knew what baseball was, it was around the 1992 expansion draft that a friend and I were talking about wanting to be fans of a team from its inception. We had a choice between the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins. We chose the Rockies.

Not too long after that, I won a bet with someone concerning the outcome of a Mizzou - Oklahoma State basketball game, and my winning was a Rockies baseball cap. Fitted. 7 1/4".

I wore that cap a lot over the first five years of the Rockies' existence. The Blake Street Bombers were exciting, though not particularly good. Better than the Brewers, though. Burks, Walker, Galarraga, Castilla, Bichette. That was fun baseball.

Then the move to the Eastern Time Zone and a gradual decline in the Rockies' competitiveness kinda forced me to lose track of Colorado. Like the Brewers, when a team isn't at least competitive, the team doesn't ever show up on television.

So this year was a good year for my two favorite teams. Milwaukee choked in the second half with lousy pitching, but stuck it to the Padres on the last weekend to give the Rockies a shot.

And the Rockies were on national TV, playing their 163rd game of the season. First time all year they'd gotten a national broadcast, albeit on TBS (which had gone HD just days before, lucky me).

Eight wins later, they're in the World Series against the bleeping Red Sox.

I'm not rooting against the Sox just because they're playing the Rockies. I'm rooting against the Red Sox because I hate them, too. If the Red Sox and the Yankees simply vanished, I couldn't be happier about life.

You don't have to hate the Red Sox to root for the Rockies, though. You could just hate the big money clubs that spend their way to the Series instead of working the hard way to get there. 

Where's all of those "Ditch Mitch and Rich" UK fans now?

#17 UK 43

#1 LSU 37