Backe on top

A brief glimpse at the blog entries of the last few days will show you that I'm as guilty as anyone of having an ALCS focus, almost to the point of ignoring the National League Championship Series. However, the Astros are making it harder and harder to ignore their amazing comeback from 2-0 down in the series - last night they took Game 5 from the Cardinals thanks to an incredible performance from Brandon Backe, a walk-off home run from Jeff Kent and assorted wizadry from Carlos Beltran. Jayson Stark has all the juicy details.

The scheduling gods have finally got on the Astros' side - a possibly historic Game 6 is scheduled to take place at 4pm ET on Wednesday and it clashes with nothing else. Of course, if Curt Schilling and the Red Sox were to win tonight in the Bronx, the Astros' game would still be overshadowed by the spectre of an ALCS Game 7, but I would think that the Astros would be willing to take second billing in exchange for the first World Series appearance in franchise history.

It's going to be a great few days of baseball. The one downside is that my CSSA is taking a serious nosedive - I haven't been keeping the stats over the whole of the Championship Series period, but over the past three days my CSSA has dipped to a an impressive, borderline insomniac 3.33 (2 hours Saturday, 6 hours Sunday, 2 hours last night). At this rate I'm on track to break my own personal record, but it's no big deal: I'll sleep when I'm dead.