I guess I'm the Mets' good-luck charm. As soon as I blogged on Friday about how badly they'd been playing, they turned around and won three straight. I can hear the collective sigh of relief from three die-hard Mets fans in particular -- my longtime friend Gil, up in Rochester; former Freeman reporter Bob Mitchell; and Freeman Assistant Sports Editor Dave Hines. It's OK, guys -- you can exhale now. Your playoff berth -- probably by way of the N.L. East crown -- appears to be a certainty.

Over on my side of the league, my beloved Angels wrapped up the A.L. West title today, their third division crown in four years. Nice to see them get it done with a full week left in the season, but now Manager Mike Scioscia has to decide whether to rest his star players (most notably slugger Vladimir Guerrero, who has a tricep problem; and pitching ace Kelvim Escobar, who has a shoulder issue) or play to win for the next seven days because the team that finishes with the best record in each league gets home-field advantage throughout the league's playoffs. Conventional wisdom says you rest your stars, especially the banged-up ones, once you win your division -- because a good team can win at home or on the road in the playoffs -- but the Angels are a notoriously mediocre road team this year (just 38-37), while they have the best home record in the majors (54-27). So it might behoove them to play for home advantage.

Looking ahead, the Angels are likely to get either the Yankees or the Red Sox in the opening round of the playoffs. Ask me which team I'd rather see the Angels face, and I'll just look at you with a blank stare -- because both of them scare the heck out of me. The Red Sox are the only team in the league that consistently has had the Angels' number, and the Yankees are so incredibly hot right now that I fear my guys getting steamrolled next week if the Bombers are their opponent. And spare me the history: that the Angels are the only team with a winning record against the Yankees during the Joe Torre years; and that the Angels have bounced the Yankees out of the playoffs twice in recent years. The Yankees are a team on a mission right now (and they certainly are due to get revenge against their arch-nemeses from Anaheim), and I really don't want any part of them.

If they Angels do reach the World Series, I sure hope they find the Mets there waiting for them. That was, after all, supposed to be the matchup in 1986 -- but that was the year the Angels, after taking a 3-1 lead in the ALCS, imploded in the ninth inning of the Game 5 and then dropped Games 6 and 7 to -- who else? -- the Boston Red Sox. (Then came Mookie's dribbler and Buckner's blunder, and the rest is baseball history.)

Gil and I always wondered how an Angels-Mets series would have gone. Twenty-one years later, we may finally get the chance to find out.