This year there’s a good chance that the American elections and the World Series will end within a week of each other.  And since nothing says America like baseball and apple pie, that’s good news.  More than that, both of them have the chance to be doozies this time around.  Baseball had it’s first play-in wild card game.  The Presidential election has it’s first candidate who wears magical underwear.  The whole world has turned upside down but luckily we just get to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Normally I’d spend quite a bit of time here explaining how we get to the end and who goes where.  I’d predict the Yankees and Orioles while waxing rhapsodic on the Giants and Reds.  I’d try to compare each one to a major figure in the two parties and then slowly whittle both sides down until we had a final face off.  Somehow I’d work both Paul Ryan and Joe Biden in there, trying to set Biden’s propensity for off-the-cuff remarks (“He’s clean AND articulate!”) against Ryan’s propensity to rearrange the truth into a freakish facsimile of itself (“Yeah, bro, I totally ran a marathon in less than three hours despite having to stop to rescue a small child and his kitten from a burning tree”).

But not this year.  This year is different.  This year is already set.  This is the year that Willard Romney and Barack Obama throw down for all the marbles.  And this is also the year that my Tigers and Jeff’s Cardinals meet again for a rematch of the 2006 World Series.

That’s right folks, although it may not seem probable or even possible, you heard it here first.  The World Series this year will be a Red State Blue State phantasmagoria.  Justin Verlander vs. Adam Wainwright.  Jim Leyland vs. the guy who replaced Tony La Russa.  Prince Fielder vs. not-Albert Pujols.  Triple Crown winner and likely MVP Miguel Cabrera vs. anyone stupid enough to actually throw to him.  It’s a matchup for the ages.

So, how does this match up with the Presidential race, you ask?  Well, like this:

Barack Obama, like the Cardinals, is the incumbent, and both find themselves in much shakier positions than when they last won.  The Cardinals are playing with a ragtag team and no longer have master strategist La Russa at the reigns.  Meanwhile, Obama is playing on a field that tilts a different direction each week depending on jobs reports and the unemployment rate.  The Cardinals come in on the high of winning the inaugural Wild Card play-in game while Obama has been surfing the wave of Bin Laden’s death.  But both of them have come crashing back to earth in the last few days with Obama’s performance in the first debate and the Cardinals’ dropping game one of the Division Series at home.  But you’d be stupid to count either one out just yet.

Willard “Mitt” Romney, just like the Tigers, almost made it to the finals last time but fell just short in the end.  And both of them seem to be getting hot at just the right time.  The Tigers finally found that next gear they had been missing all year as they sped past the White Sox and then took a quick 2-0 lead over the A’s in the Division Series.  Willard seemed to do the same as he used an excellent debate performance to make up ground in the polls.  Sure, he may not have been anyone’s top choice coming out of a field that included a man whose name is now synonymous with the “frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex,” but he did pull it out in the end (no pun intended) and now has the parties elites linded up behind him (again, no pun intended).  Similarly, the Tigers probably didn’t top anyone’s list limply sliding out of an impressively putrid AL Central (seriously?) but here they both are.

But, the answer you’re all dying to know is, “Who wins?”  And it’s a tough one to call.  On the one hand, I’d love to see my Tigers finally pay pack the Cardinals for ruining our run in 2006.  On the other hand, although I realize there aren’t that many differences between the Republicans and Democrats, I really don’t think that Romney’s indebtedness to the Christian right and the Tea-Party are good for our country’s future our for our role as a leader in the international community.  As I’ve said before, it’s great to have your team win but what happens in politics affects not just us but the rest of the world…

…which is why I will celebrate with a heavy heart when the Tigers win the World Series.  I’ll cheer my Tigers during the first week of November but I’ll grieve for my country in the second.

Don’t hate me because I called it right last time.  Hate me because I’m right this time.

-A