Swing and a miss on dream World Series

It had the makings of a dynamic World Series, one which would have truly been a Fall Classic clash between the Yankees and the Dodgers, two of Major League Baseball's most storied and beloved franchises.

It would have provided Dodgers manager Joe Torre — who guided the Yankees to 12 consecutive postseason appearances and four World Series championships — an opportunity to face his former employers on the world's biggest postseason stage.

And very possibly, Torre would've gotten a chance to stick it to the Steinbrenner family and the seemingly ungrateful "What have you done for me lately?" franchise that essentially ran him out of New York two years ago.

Yes, it had all the makings of a Hollywood script — former manager, once the toast of the town before being banished, gets a chance to manage again and comes back to face his old ballclub, beating them for the championship with a team which hadn't won a world title in a couple of decades.

But a not-so-funny thing happened to Torre on the way to his sweet Series revenge: The Dodgers got bounced out of this year's playoffs by a better team, the Philadelphia Phillies, who will now try to become the first National League ballclub to repeat as world champions since the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine" claimed back-to-back crowns in 1975-76.

The results from the National League Championship Series will show that the Dodgers were officially eliminated from postseason play on Wednesday, Oct. 21, when they were bludgeoned by the Phillies 10-4 in Game 5 of the NLCS.

Truth is, though, the Dodgers probably lost the NL series a night earlier, when their bullpen couldn't hold a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning and gave up a game-winning, two-run double to Jimmy Rollins.

Instead of holding on to win that game and squaring the series at two games apiece, that devastating defeat dumped the Dodgers into a 3-1 hole, and the Phillies finished 'em off the next night with that 10-4 beatdown.

And with a team earned-run average on the wrong side of 7.00-plus in the NLCS, it's obvious to see why the Dodgers are done playing.

So now, instead of that nostalgic Dodgers-Yankees rivalry — they've met in the World Series 11 previous times, with the Yankees winning eight of those match-ups — and a storybook showdown in which Torre trades in his Yankee pinstripes for Dodger Blue, we're probably gonna get Phillies-Yankees.

Not that there's anything wrong with that (to repeat the politically correct phrase often used when discussing gay issues).