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Dodger first baseman Nomar Garciaparra left NLDS Game 2 early with a leg injury. I don't have the least sympathy for competing teams losing key players to injury at this point -- not after the Mets lost their top two starting pitchers in the week before the playoffs.

The Mets are vulnerable to left-handed pitching, so it was a blow for the Dodgers to lose their key lefty reliever, Joe Beimel, who cut his pitching hand on a glass in his hotel room the night before the playoffs began. Weirdly, Beimel dropped the drinking glass, tried to catch it, and apparently ended up mashing his hand down on it as it broke.

There is karma in that story. The last time the Mets played the Dodgers in the playoffs, it was 1988. The Mets dominated the NL that year, and the Dodgers (winning 11 of 12 regular season games against the Dodgers). The Mets were clearly the stronger team, and, with their 1986 World Series victory, it seemed as though a pennant win would put them well on their way to nice run of success.

But the Dodgers -- who have had more than there fair share of success since stabbing their Brooklyn fans in the back and moving to LA -- eked out a win in the seven game series and went on to win the World Series, and all the announcers went on about the Dodgers "season of destiny" and all that crap.

The fact is that the Mets were one starting pitcher short in that series. You see, a couple of days before the playoffs, the Mets' ace lefty, Bobby Ojeda, cut a finger of his pitching hand with an electric hedge trimmer. What the hell was he doing trimming his hedge right before the playoffs?

So as I see it: bizarre injury to your key lefty's pitching hand means your opponent is the "team of destiny."