It’s a bit of a rarity when one can objectively look at a matchup in a championship series and be able to say that the two best teams are meeting for a league title. Last year the World Series featured a Wild Card winner in Tampa Bay, the Arizona Cardinals made the Super Bowl after going just 9-7 during the regular season, and the Orlando Magic defeated the top two seed in the Eastern Conference to inexplicably advance to the NBA Finals (sorry to bring it up Cavs fans).

A Cinderella squad did not crash the 2009 Eastern League Championship Series however. Akron and Connecticut were easily the two best teams in the league during the regular season, and proved it in the divisional round as the Aeros swept Reading in three games and the Defenders dispatched New Britain in four contests. Both clubs breezed to a first-place finish during the regular season, with the Aeros taking the Southern Division by a whopping 14 games and Connecticut claiming the Northern Division by 10.5 games. Akron’s 89 wins were the second most in team history, while the Defenders tied a team record with 83 victories. The Aeros feature the triumvirate of MVP Carlos Santana, Pitcher of the Year Jeanmar Gomez and Manager of the Year Mike Sarbaugh, while Connecticut had the league leader in batting average (Brock Bond at .333) and runs batted in (Brett Pill with 109).

With so many outstanding individual performers on both sides and both clubs accustomed to finding ways to win, nothing is going to come free in this series. The teams met six times during the regular season with Akron winning four of the games, but just five runs separated the clubs on aggregate. The Aeros dropped the first meeting of the year at Canal Park in early August, but rebounded with back-to-back walk-off wins to take two of three in that series. Beau Mills was the hero August 5th with the game-winning single in the bottom of the 10th inning, and the next night Matt McBride roped an RBI double in the bottom of the ninth to propel Akron to a 2-1 win. The Aeros then took the first two games at Dodd Stadium in Connecticut a week later before the Defenders got a walk-off win of their own to avoid the sweep.

League MVP Santana certainly looked the part in the six games against Connecticut, batting a sublime .476 (10-21) with three RBI and an unreal .621 on-base percentage. Carlos Rivero (8-20) and John Drennen (4-10) both batted .400 against the Defenders, while on the mound Josh Tomlin was 1-0 with a 4.26 ERA and left-hander Eric Berger allowed just two hits in six innings in his only start. On the opposite side, Pill did his share of damage against Akron pitching with a .400 average, two homers, and seven RBI in six games, while Brad Boyer hit .381 in five games and Mike McBryde batted .357 in four games. The Aeros did keep Bond in check however, holding the batting champ to just one hit in 21 at-bats (an .048 average). One other thing to keep in mind is on the pitching side for the Defenders: they lost top-prospect Madison Bumgarner to a Major League call-up on the eve of the playoffs, while starting pitchers Craig Clark and Ari Ronick both made their Double-A debuts in the first rounder series against New Britain.