Hail to the Cardinals!
Well, it’s all over.
And the baseball Cinderella story of the Detroit Tigers, a downtrodden team that finally broke through in a big way this year, is overshadowed by the much more unlikely Cinderella story of the St. Louis Cardinals…a team that had come so close in the recent past, but especially after their embarrassing four-game sweep two years ago at the hands of the Boston Red Sox, tasted their share of frustration snd disappointment.
Those who looked upon the Cardinals’ 83-78 regular season record this year and dismissed them as possibly the worst team to ever make it to a World Series had embarrasingly short memories…the 2004 team had baseball’s best record before being squashed, and this year’s team was doing quite well for itself until injuries began to ravage them.
And the Cardinals fell into quite a tailspin at the end of this season, nearly losing their division to the onrushing Houston Astros, before closing the door in the last weekend of the season.
Then, the Cardinals were given very little hope of getting past the West Division champion San Diego Padres in the first round. Thus challenged, the Cards promptly blew the Padres away quickly, earning the right to play the team with the majors’ best record, the New York Mets. Again, the doubters crowded like vultures at the Cardinals’ door.
But again, like the little engine that could, the Cardinals rose to the challenge, and chugged past the Mets in an exciting seven-game series, refusing to fold in the face of those who scoffed at their mere presence that far into the playoffs.
As the World Series began, their opponents, the Tigers, had blown past both the New York Yankees and the Oakland Athletics with such ease, they had a week to rest and wait for the battle-weary Cardinals. Yet, as this Series unfolded, a quite different than expected scenario developed.
For it seems as if the long layoff cooled whatever momentum the Tigers had built up in crushing their American League foes, and they seemed to forget how to hit and produce runs. Certainly their pitchers forgot how to field their position, committing crucial errors in all five games of the series. The Cardinals, meanwhile, rolled on, oblivious to what people thought they were supposed to do. They just kept playing baseball as best they could, and they made all the big play necessary to win games.
Tonight’s clincher was won by the much maligned Jeff Weaver, who’s college games I had the pleasure of seeing up close at Fresno State(I even got to broadcast a few of them), and he was one of the school’s most celebrated pitchers, setting a then-College World Series record 18 strikeouts against Texas Tech, and he went on to spend several years with the Tigers, among other major league teams. I knew Jeff a bit, and it’s always nice to see an old acquanitance make it to the top of his profession.
Clearly, the better team won…proving that a regular season record is not the sole indicator of championship playoff success.
One disturbing aspect of this year’s World Series is that the TV ratings hit new lows for such an event. There are lots of explanations for why they were so low, and possibly many of them are correct. Yes, the teams were located in smaller markets than they could have been. And yes, the teams themselves might not have been as exciting in a superficial way as others who could have been playing.
But there’s another aspect that’s not been written about much, and I’d like to suggest that one right here.
Baseball used to run from April to early October, and made a graceful exit just as football season was getting underway. But now, with the expanded playoffs and preponderance of teams, the season is stretched for longer than most seasonal sports fans can bear. In recent years, the World Series has stretched into November, and the October classic has threatened to become the November classic, which this one would have done had the Cardinals not been so efficient in dispatching the Tigers. When the baseball season lingers until the halfway point of the NFL season, something is wrong.
And it is rightly disturbing to see championship baseball being played in the weather conditions of New York in the NLCS, and St. Louis early in the World Series. Baseball is not meant to be played in cold, damp weather. If baseball insists on having all these teams, and all these extra games, pehpas it would be advisable to look into starting the season in March, to get things over with by October, so the interest in following baseball will not be hindered by bad weather and bad NFL games.
Or maybe they could go back to a 154-game schedule as they did before 1961…then they wouldn’t need to worry about putting asterisks beside record season performances.
In any case, something needs to be done before we end up watching the seventh game of the World Series over our Thanksgiving dinner. There is NO reason to prolong baseball until November…none.
In any case, congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals…REAL champions, for their deserved, hard-fought World Series victory.
Posted on Oct 27, 2006 - 09:43 PM | [0]
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