I debated just putting this image, but felt the need to try and create sort of a collage here of a couple of those unmistakably ugly moments of this year's World Series. When I consider that I was bitching last year about the number of early ends to series in the postseason, I can issue no such complaints this year. Of the 41 possible games in baseball's playoffs, 38 got played. And no, not all of them were pretty. But we still got more than our fair share of genuinely tension-filled moments that are only possible in this game.
Thanks in large part, I assume, to an instant epic Game 6 that sort of embodied everything awesome and awful about the entire postseason, the title to my post for the incorrect pick went from looking like a possibility to being a pretty good-size hit. Good for baseball.
Of course, that sixth game pretty much made an immediate claim to legendary status just for the dramatic moment after moment after moment that unfolded at the end. And the pain that any Rangers fan is feeling today is one that puts the rest of the 29 teams to pretty sever shame. I've harped enough about the Atlanta and Boston failures this season, but right now it's pretty clear that as long as we're talking about who should be hurting the most, I don't know that I've ever seen a team come within one strike twice.
And I'm wondering when they're going to start getting really bitter.
I'm sure the umpiring is already a popular complaint. But ever since the ridiculous awarding of home-field for the World Series started going to the league that won an exhibition game that began in 2003, this year was the first time a seventh game was played. And the Rangers who won 96 games found themselves having to concede the deciding game to a St. Louis team that won the least amount of games in the regular season of any team in the playoffs. Then the Cardinals went and got the 11th and most important win.
There's a number of individual situations that you could go back into a series like this and wonder how they might have been affected by having the designated hitter in the lineups, and as long as that rule remains in place in one league but not the other, the All-Star Game should no longer determine something as fundamentally crucial as the deciding game of your sport's championship. I most certainly enjoyed having such a pretty much nightly supply of playoff baseball this fall, but the result leaves me hoping that other teams in baseball take notice of the seeming injustice of this concept and drop the gimmick. The Cardinals are deserving champions, for sure. Let their victory commemorate and end to an unnecessary attempt to make a midsummer exhibition game more meaningful than it needs to be. We've got the World Series for that.
Anyway, here's how everybody ended up doing for predictions this postseason:
And so concludes what will probably be an extraordinarily memorable baseball playoffs for the infamous Game 6 alone. While fans for many teams can whine about what didn't go their way this year, I don't know that I'd ever want to experience anything like what the Rangers faithful endured this season—and not just because of the way it ended. I immediately wonder how this will play out for that team this off-season, but almost get the sense that some of those players are just not going to be the same again.
On the other hand, it's astonishing that Tony La Russa has once again taken a Cardinal team that barely got into the playoffs and emerge as champions. At least the Braves can say they lost their playoff spot to the champs, but I'm once again just left in a sort of disbelief that the Cards actually did it.
Really?
I suppose the St. Louis run will probably inspire plenty of fans around in the nation, however, for future references will abound when a favorite team is within 10 games of the Wild Card in August. Maybe even September. About the only people probably not wanting to make such a reference would probably be Texas fans.
UPDATE: The Saturday morning edition of the Dallas Morning News did not feature much additional coverage of Game 7, instead running one longer Associated Press report about the end of the Series. I imagine that the page designers had probably put some hours into a special section that obviously will not run this season, but after I wrote this post last night, Tim Cowlishaw has a column in this morning's paper basically calling attention to the same thing I said in this post. I'm sure there are many others, but like I said, increased talk about changing this asinine rule can only be a good thing.
Thanks in large part, I assume, to an instant epic Game 6 that sort of embodied everything awesome and awful about the entire postseason, the title to my post for the incorrect pick went from looking like a possibility to being a pretty good-size hit. Good for baseball.
Of course, that sixth game pretty much made an immediate claim to legendary status just for the dramatic moment after moment after moment that unfolded at the end. And the pain that any Rangers fan is feeling today is one that puts the rest of the 29 teams to pretty sever shame. I've harped enough about the Atlanta and Boston failures this season, but right now it's pretty clear that as long as we're talking about who should be hurting the most, I don't know that I've ever seen a team come within one strike twice.
And I'm wondering when they're going to start getting really bitter.
I'm sure the umpiring is already a popular complaint. But ever since the ridiculous awarding of home-field for the World Series started going to the league that won an exhibition game that began in 2003, this year was the first time a seventh game was played. And the Rangers who won 96 games found themselves having to concede the deciding game to a St. Louis team that won the least amount of games in the regular season of any team in the playoffs. Then the Cardinals went and got the 11th and most important win.
There's a number of individual situations that you could go back into a series like this and wonder how they might have been affected by having the designated hitter in the lineups, and as long as that rule remains in place in one league but not the other, the All-Star Game should no longer determine something as fundamentally crucial as the deciding game of your sport's championship. I most certainly enjoyed having such a pretty much nightly supply of playoff baseball this fall, but the result leaves me hoping that other teams in baseball take notice of the seeming injustice of this concept and drop the gimmick. The Cardinals are deserving champions, for sure. Let their victory commemorate and end to an unnecessary attempt to make a midsummer exhibition game more meaningful than it needs to be. We've got the World Series for that.
Anyway, here's how everybody ended up doing for predictions this postseason:
1. (1) Tim Brown, Yahoo!: 5-2 (3)
2. (2) Jayson Stark, ESPN: 4-3 (3)
5. (7) Jeff Passan, Yahoo!: 4-3 (2)
6. (4) Jerry Crasnick, ESPN: 4-3 (1)
6. (4) YOURS TRULY: 4-3 (1)
6. (4) Jerry Crasnick, ESPN: 4-3 (1)
6. (4) YOURS TRULY: 4-3 (1)
8. (7) Jim Bowden, ESPN: 3-4 (1)
8. (7) Jim Caple, ESPN: 3-4 (1)
8. (7) Steve Henson, Yahoo!: 3-4 (1)
11. (11) David Schoenfield, ESPN: 2-5 (2)
8. (7) Jim Caple, ESPN: 3-4 (1)
8. (7) Steve Henson, Yahoo!: 3-4 (1)
11. (11) David Schoenfield, ESPN: 2-5 (2)
And so concludes what will probably be an extraordinarily memorable baseball playoffs for the infamous Game 6 alone. While fans for many teams can whine about what didn't go their way this year, I don't know that I'd ever want to experience anything like what the Rangers faithful endured this season—and not just because of the way it ended. I immediately wonder how this will play out for that team this off-season, but almost get the sense that some of those players are just not going to be the same again.
On the other hand, it's astonishing that Tony La Russa has once again taken a Cardinal team that barely got into the playoffs and emerge as champions. At least the Braves can say they lost their playoff spot to the champs, but I'm once again just left in a sort of disbelief that the Cards actually did it.
Really?
I suppose the St. Louis run will probably inspire plenty of fans around in the nation, however, for future references will abound when a favorite team is within 10 games of the Wild Card in August. Maybe even September. About the only people probably not wanting to make such a reference would probably be Texas fans.
UPDATE: The Saturday morning edition of the Dallas Morning News did not feature much additional coverage of Game 7, instead running one longer Associated Press report about the end of the Series. I imagine that the page designers had probably put some hours into a special section that obviously will not run this season, but after I wrote this post last night, Tim Cowlishaw has a column in this morning's paper basically calling attention to the same thing I said in this post. I'm sure there are many others, but like I said, increased talk about changing this asinine rule can only be a good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment