Whaddaya mean?! Big Blue is undefeated, and in first place in the NFC East! Hell, they’re the highest-scoring team in the entire NFL this season!
Wooo! Go Giants!!
What? They still have 15 games left to play? Ahhh, crap!
In general, I’ll root for my division (because if yer gonna be beat, might as well be beat by the best), and the NL in the World Series (because I prefer actual baseball to that AL bullshit).
Extenuating circumstances can certainly adjust this general position. I was rooting all the way for the Red Sox last year, in equal parts for the historical moment, and the satisfaction of seeing that whiny little ball-slappin’ dingus Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees implode. And under no circumstances will I root for LA, Yankees, nor the Los Anaheim Angels of Whatever.
Mets fan. Sigh. Whoever makes the NL Wild Card should send them a thank-you note.
That having been said, my rooting policy goes something like this: despite the division rivalry, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Phillies, Marlins, or (heh) Nationals in it. I can accept the Cardinals because they’re so good and their fans are so nice and all. That it looks like a sub-.500 team will go onto the postseason from the West is a little disheartening (esp. if the whole NL East finishes above .500, which may happen). I will root for anyone against the Braves (generally deader in October than a hothouse flower left on the porch anyway). In fact, I would root for just about any NL team in the World Series except the Braves (like they ever get there). Although Astros-Angels or Padres-Indians (as if) would be a tough one.
Rooting for the Yankees to lose and lose spectacularly is knee-jerk (and, if you will, rest-of-the-body-jerk as well) for your average Mets fan, but schadenfreudetort is not sweet enough to assuage another last-place finish. Braves-Yankees is a World Series worst-case scenario for me.
Base … ball? What is this strange word? I’ve never heard it before …
PS - I live in Dallas
My gut instinct, they are just sucking us in for another crushing blow.
My hope: this is for real and with Eagles minus McNabb this weekend, I have hopes of them falling 0-2.
Mariners fan here. As it currently stands, if the team wins every single remaining game, they’ll finish at .500. Um, yeah.
And yet, I still listen to or watch probably two games in three.
And this is why.
See, the Mariners sucked for the first, oh, eighty-gazillion years of the franchise. Then they had a run of six or seven years where they were a serious contender. And then, after sucking their veterans dry, they crashed and burned again.
So, really, this is the first time I get to see what a “rebuilding year” looks like, up-close and first-hand, with a team I know intimately. Until that first successful season in 1995, there couldn’t be “re”-building because nothing had been built yet. 
Now, though, we know what success feels like, we know what a healthy, functioning team looks like, and we get to watch management trying to tinker with the moving parts to create a winning organization. And honestly, it’s fascinating. We get to see the rookies cycled in and out; we get to identify which guys are magic gloves, and which guys are clods in the field but bashers at the plate; we get to observe the calculus of balancing all the bits and pieces, trying to cause the chemical reaction that gives rise to a good, winning team.
And that gives us something to talk about, since we ain’t got shit else to discuss. (“Are they gonna deal Morse? This Betancourt’s got it goin’ on up the middle. What the hell are they gonna do behind the plate?” etc.)
Like I said, though, this is a pretty radical change for Seattle baseball fans from the previous years of misery, when nobody bothered to pay attention because nobody knew what it was like to have an actual contender in town. Interesting the difference that makes.
Since others have talked about their ideal post-season matchups with their favorite team out of it, I’ll contribute my own.
Generally speaking, I’ll root for the NL in a WS unless it’s the Giants or Braves. If either of those teams wound up playing the Yankees, I’d probably implode.
Well, no…let’s be honest. If it was Giants-Yankees, I’d cheer for the Yankees because I don’t want Bonds to get a ring. There was nothing sweeter for me than seeing the Angels take out the Giants in '02.
I guess in an ideal world with the Dodgers out of contention, I’d like to see Washington take down the Yankees.
I live in Kansas City. Home of the 100 losing season. Home of the second longest losing streak in MLB history. And this is just in the last two years.
We have officially been declared mathematically eliminated from the playoffs until 2012.
Go Royals!