Not bad. You missed Arizona (but said you weren't sure about the NL West) and said you had confidence in the Red Sox (but who could have predicted what happened there?)
Doug Thanks. I admit, shamefacedly, that I _forgot about_ Arizona when I was writing that up, or I think I would have picked them. But for some reason they well and truly dropped off my mental map of the Major Leagues. I do claim a pass on the Red Sox :-) on the grounds that I couldn't possibly have guessed that Nomar _and_ Pedro would miss most of the season, Manny would be injured for much of it, Carl Everett would go insane (well, I guess that was predictable) _and_ that Duquette would fire a manager who had managed to keep them in contention because of it. The whole team went nuts :-( Given how close they were for how long, I still think that had they had even moderately bad luck with injuries - heck, if Pedro and Manny had stayed healthy all by themselves - they would have caught the Yanks. I should say that I was clearly wrong about Soriano, and that was because I didn't have enough faith in Yankees management which - very much to their credit - appears to have succeeded in teaching Soriano the virtues of plate discipline _during a Major League season_ - one of the most remarkable instructional feats that I can recall. The ability to do something like that, more than any other single factor - even their money - explains the Yankees dominance over the last few years, I think. Gautam
