It’s a bunch of guys from Mormon country who got into the playoffs on a wing and a prayer. First they deposed the reigning champions, beating them twice, and then they took out the number two team. Now they’re in the national championship, going against a big-money team laden with international stars.

And you’ve never heard of them.

Real Salt Lake went into the final weekend of the MLS season needing a whole bunch of results to go their way in order to make the playoffs. They took care of their own business, annihilating local rival Colorado Rapids, but that was only one step of a 5-piece parlay the Utah team needed to reach the postseason. And, improbably, every piece fell into place.

There really isn’t any good way to compare how lucky Salt Lake even was to make the playoffs. The closest metaphor I can come up with would be if last season’s Tampa Bay Rays made the playoffs. Not a great team, hardly even a good team, but somehow the math worked out in their favor.

Of course, in baseball, squeaking into the playoffs usually means you’re rewarded with the toughest opponent on the slate. MLS is much the same way – Salt Lake’s four-leaf clover gave them a date with the Columbus Crew, last season’s MLS Cup Champions and this season’s best team in record. But Salt Lake became the little team that could, beating Columbus in both halves of the two-game series to earn a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals. (I know, “Eastern Conference Finals” and Salt Lake City? MLS has a strange process that lets the best 8 teams qualify, regardless of conference. They get broken into East and West after that.)

But even beating the champs left them with a match against the Chicago Fire, who had dispatched the New England Revolution in their Eastern Conference Semifinal matchup. The game was in Chicago, where massive supporters groups light flares and hurl streamers and dance and sing for 90 minutes solid, all in an effort to intimidate the away team.

And somehow, despite having just barely made it into the playoffs in the first place, the Rocky Mountain gang pulled it off. After a full 90-minute game and 30 minutes of overtime, nobody had scored. So the Eastern Conference Championship would go to the team that could best win in penalty kicks.

Here’s another baseball reference for you. Imagine penalty kicks as being like a Home Run Derby. Only the Home Run Derby counts, and they use it instead of extra innings. That’s what the pressure is like.

Remarkably, Salt Lake goalkeeper Nick Rimando (“moonpie” to his detractors in fanbases around the league) stopped three of the penalty shots he faced in a Herculean effort that saw this season’s Cinderella through to the championship.

But two household names are waiting to smash the glass slipper. Landon Donovan, David Beckham, and the rest of the Los Angeles Galaxy will take on the “Eastern Conference Champion” Real Salt Lake in the MLS Cup Final November 22nd in Seattle. L.A. will be a heavy favorite, but so was Chicago. And so was Columbus.

And so were the four teams Salt Lake leapfrogged on the last weekend of play.

For once, the Cinderella story might not end at midnight. It might carry through to next season.