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While the global financial mess may be in the saddle and riding man kind, since I was able to take the prudent step some years ago of crafting a life for myself outside the loop, I now have the luxury of stopping and grazing a little during these troubled times. So my focus at the moment while the rest of globe tears it's collective hair out over economics, will be on Baseball.

Tonight is game one of the National League Conference Series and while the pundit dudes have this one as pretty close - I think Joe Torre's Dodgers are destined for greatness this year. The facts - the black and white tangibles - point towards a Philadelphia win.

They have home field advantage and during the regular season swept the Dodgers 4-0 at home. But people, but, the regular season is the regular season and it's the intangible that determine the outcome of these series'.

The Dodgers swept the Cubs in the last round - the Cubs had the best regular season record, so LA are peaking at the right time. Also Philadelphia is a city cloaked in failure. All of their teams across the four main North America sports are under achievers.

One reason for this might be the mentality of their fans. They're the loudest when their teams are winning, but the first to turn on their own team when they're showing signs of losing - also the city stinks of bad AIDs if that Tom Hanks movie is anything to go by and that can't be an inspiring atmosphere.

Philadelphia do not have a winning mentality. Joe Torre does and so does Manny Ramirez. LA are more balanced team also. Philadelphia rely on big hitting so if they mess up just once in their own park which is a hitters park, they will lose because LA's stadium is pitcher friendly and they'll need to be able to manufacture runs, which they have proven to be incapable of doing. This is LA in 6 games and no mistake and you can quote me.

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In the ADLS young Paul "The Game" bless his little cotton red sox has called the series in Boston's favour. I've agreed with him in all fairness - up until last night that is, when I received a carrier pigeon message from Nate Silver.

He sent his best bird, Tampa. I was fixing myself a sammich when I heard a strange coo-cooing coming from my window sill and there the little chap was tapping away on my window with his little beak.

I unclipped the capsule on his little wrinkly leg, unravelled the little message and spat my tea out at the information laid before me. Nate Silver incidentally was someone who I first heard tell of after he appeared on the Colbert Report promoting a website called fivethirtyeight.com which predicts Presidential election outcomes. But fivethirtyeight is just a spin-off from young Nate's real bread and butter which is SABRmetrics.

SABR is an acronym for Society for American Baseball Research. He uses objective stats to predict the outcomes of baseball games and series's's's and is darn good at it too. So anyway..I won't go into the systems he uses because I don't know what they are and wouldn't understand them anyhoo, but the message he sent me clearly stated that Tampa are going to cause an upset here. You heard it right folks. Tampa Bay to beat Boston. I'll say no more.