Despite whatever contrarian knee-jerk reaction you might have to Dane Cook shouting at you, the 2007 World Series is shaping up to be a classic. The Boston Red Sox, paragons of consistent domination, and the Colorado Rockies, the hottest team baseball has seen in a long, long time, squaring off. It's going to be a good one. But just how high does the Rockies' incredible run rank? Even without a World Series, is it the craziest team achievement in baseball history?
Fortunately, we have Rob Neyer to put these things into context (free Insider preview; hurry!):
3. 2007 Colorado Rockies
On the morning of Sept. 16, the Rockies were in fourth place in the National League West. They were 6½ games out of first place, and 4½ games behind the wild card-leading Padres. They'd lost three straight games, and they were dead in the water. Or so it seemed. On the afternoon of Sept. 16 the Rockies trounced the Marlins 13-0, beginning a season-ending surge that would include one loss and 14 wins, including a one-game playoff for the wild card. Since then they've swept their Division and League Championship Series, and so they enter the World Series next week having won 21 of 22 games, and it's safe to say that no team has ever entered the World Series on a run like the Rockies'.For the record, Neyer's No. 1 and No. 2 miracles were Boston's comeback in 2004 and DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak in 1941. No matter what happens to the Rockies in this series, they're already perched near some incredibly lofty company.
