This series is shaping up like one of those Davd-vs.-Golliath like classics.

The Boston Red Sox are the better team, and everybody knows it. They were the best team in the American League, which is much better than the National League. The Colorado Rockies were the fourth-best team in the National League, which doesn’t hold a candle to the American Leauge.

Boston’s third-starter, Daisuke Matsuzaka, would probably have battled with Jeff Francis for the top-spot in Colorado’s rotation this spring. The Red Sox’s pitching staff as a whole is far deeper than Colorado’s, whch had a lot to do with the team winning six more games than Colorado during the regular season.

Look for example at today’s game-two pitching matchup. The Red Sox are giving the ball to 40-year-old Curt Shcilling, while Colorado is countering with a 23-year-old rookie, Ubaldo Jimenez.

Schilling is one of the best postseason pitchers of all-time, and along with John Smoltz, is probably one of baseball’s best two post-season arms of the last quarter-century. He’s won 10 postseason starts. His counter-part tonight, Jimenez, only has five more regular-season starts than Schilling has playoff wins.

I’m not for a second saying that Colorado doesn’t deserve to be the NL representative in ths year’s World Series. The 21-1 streak the team went on to punch its ticket to the fall-classic was both entralling and magical. The most impressive aspect of Colorado’s stretch was the team’s ability to pitch well, with no-names like Jimenez and Josh Fogg, at home.

Winning the World Series isn’t about being the best team over the course of an entire season. The only thing you get for being the best all year long is the satisfaction of knowing that you won more games than anybody else in the regular season. With 96-wins, Boston and Cleveland tied for that distintion in 2007. Cleveland has already been eliminated, and while Boston is still alive, won’t help them schedule a ring-fitting right now.

The Rockies were in fourth-place in their division on the 15th of Septemeber. They needed to catch fire or they were going to be watching the playoffs from the comfort of their own lazy-boys like the rest of us. And catch fire they did. I credit them for doing that, and I’m glad they did, because their streak gave me something to follow and cheer for.

But just like Boston’s 96 regular-season wins can’t help them anymore, neither can Colorado’s scorching-hot three-week stretch. At this point, down a game in the World Series, they’ll need to overcome the odds one more time. They are clearly up against something bigger and better than themselves.

Had Boston have played in the NL West this past season, it would have run away with the division. Colorado didn’t even win it. But they did enough to get to the playoffs, and they cruised through the first two-round of the playoffs, sweeping two division-winners without an incling of a struggle.

When they were down two-runs in extra-innings of ther play-in game with the San Diego Padres, I counted them out. When they were playing the Phillies in the first-round, I counted them out. When they opposed the Arizona Diamondbacks a round later, I thought their stretch of success would come to a close. In each of those situations, they proved me wrong.

And here we are, three-weeks into October, and I’m couting them out again, having not yet learned my lesson. I’m like kid who touches a hot stove-top more than once. The Rockies keep burning me, but I haven’t yet left the kitchen.

I’m enthralled by this team, and I hope that they win the World Series, but I can’t see them beating Boston. I thnk that they are a better story, an easier team to pull for, but they are not better. And because of that - and the fact that Boston was the best team in baseball’s best league - I have to doubt them again.