Along with most of the rest of the country - that sound you hear is Fox executives whimpering - my interest in the World Series is probably lower than at any point since I moved to Arizona. Sorry, Houston. Apologies, SouthSiders. But none of the teams I genuinely want to win reached the playoffs; those I had any opinion the other way about (hello, Mr. Steinbrenner) were eliminated early.

For what it's worth though, here's the reasons why I'm favouring Chicago and Houston.

1. Will really annoy Cubs fans
2. Go, National League!
3. For some reason, Roger Clemens irritates me
4. Go, wild-card!
5. They're not the Yankees
6. They're not the Yankees

You can tell I'm stretching here, can't you? About the best I can say about a White Sox-Astros matchup, is it means nine different teams have played in the World Series in the past five years [the Yankees, twice losers, being the only repeat participants] Neither team has a recent track record in the event: it's Houston's first appearance ever in franchise history, while the White Sox last reached the big show in 1959. Back then:

• Major league baseball consisted of 16 teams
• The Braves played in Milwaukee, and the Athletics in Kansas City
• New York had one team, and Chicago as many as California, Texas and Florida put together
• Only six players had 35+ homers
• The population of all Arizona was less than 1.3 million
• My mother was 22.

Goodness me. It's thus hard to begrudge either team a moment in the sunlight. It, is however, hard to care much about who wins. On balance, I'm probably going for Houston, simply because my SportsBlogs brother over at Crawfish Boxes is getting his day in the sun. Not that South Side Sox is unworthy, but they didn't pop in here and leave comments earlier in the season like Rastronomicals did. I thus throw my full weight behind the Astros bandwagon. Let's go, Houston, let's go...