The World Series starts tomorrow night. It’s a Blue and Orange series or a White and Black Series, depending on which color’s you prefer to go with.
People keep asking me, what team are you rooting for? I say, Sabres and Bills and Bruins. With the Yankees not in the Series and since I have no real animosity or affection for either of these teams, I can’t pick a favorite. I’ve already switched the mindset to hockey, and it’ll stay there until February 20th. That’s when pitchers and catchers report.
For the first time since 1985 the Royals are going to the World Series. Last time they went, they won it all. While I am well aware that past performance doesn’t guarantee future success, I would not mind if the Royals won the World Series. Even if they did boo Cano and were rude to his family. It’s in the past and they beat the Orioles. Swept them actually, 4 games, 4 wins.
Right now I am waiting on the winner of the NLCS. The Giants and Cards are currently tied in the series and the Cards are ahead in this game. No sweep in this series, I am leaning in favor of the Giants, but I don’t really have a favorite.
The Detroit Tigers were my pick and the Orioles swept them. I also picked the Dodgers and the Cardinals beat them, 3-1. On the other and, the Royals swept the Angels. Giants and Nationals, who I didn’t really care about, went 3-1, with the Giants advancing.
Next up the championship series. And the teams in it are, Kansas City Royals versus the Baltimore Orioles (Series starts 10-10). In the national league it’s the San Francisco Giants vs the Saint Louis Cardinals (Series starts 10-11).
My picks are as follows, Royals over Orioles. I don’t want the Royals to win as much as I want the Orioles to lose. Giants over Cardinals. Again I want the Cardinals to lose more than I want the Giants to win, the Cardinals were supposed to beat the Red Sox last year and failed. So they need to suffer defeat again.
After this series it will be the World Series. If things go the way I want, it’ll be a Royals vs Giants competition. I’m looking forward to it.
The ALDS starts tonight with games between the Tigers vs Orioles (at Oriole Park, Baltimore MD) and the Royals vs Angels (at Angel Stadium, Anaheim, CA). My picks are Tigers for reasons already stated and Royals. I picked Royals for the Wild Card and am sticking with them.
The NLDS starts Friday, October 3 with the Giants vs Nationals ( at Nationals Park, Washington DC) and Cardinals vs Dodgers (at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles CA). I had already picked the Dodgers and for the NL wild card I picked the Pirates who just happened to get shut out by Bumgarner. A rather amazing feat when you consider he also batted (NL = no DH). I am once again conflicted with my pick. The thing is I don’t follow the NL and have no particular likes or dislikes concerning either of these teams. The Nationals also have an amazing pitcher who in the very last game of the regular season pitched a no-hitter. Even though I said I would pick, I think for this game I will lean back, put my feet up, pop open a cold one and just enjoy watching baseball.
This series is a best of 5. I’ll be back when one team wins 3 if not before.
The regular season is over and the post season is about to begin. Even though the Yankees are out of it, I am still baseball obsessed and will be posting my thoughts about the games ahead, including who I have decided to root for this post-season.
Most years, I root against the team that kept the Yankees out of the post-season, or beat them in the post-season, for instance if they didn’t make it past the ALDS or ALCS. Or the Red Sox. It’s always good to root against the Red Sox. This year however, the team that kept the Yankees out of the post-season was the Yankees. They just didn’t win enough games. There are some teams that I absolutely won’t root for, like the Braves, who aren’t in it, and the Orioles who are, but don’t have the most wins in the American League. An important fact that I had to bring out.
The final teams haven’t been decided, since they now have this stupid 1 game Wild Card playoff. The fourth team is YTBD. The teams competing are: Kansas City Royals and Oakland A’s (9/30) in the AL and Pittsburgh Pirates vs. San Francisco Giants (10/1) in the NL. I like the Oakland A’s, they were Hunter’s first team but they have Lester, which makes me want to hate them, but the Royals have Shields, which makes me want to root against them. I have the opposite problem with the NL teams. Pirates have Russell Martin, who is adorable, I mean a really good catcher and longtime favorite player of mine. The Giants have Buster Posey, who is also a really good catcher and fun to watch. The minuses here are the Giants are ORANGE and the Pirates are YELLOW. Also Russell has gone from being clean-shaven to a scruffy little thing. Since I promised to pick one I am going with the Royals (can’t get past the Lester dislike) and the Pirates (Russell is my boo!).
For the ALDS series between the Tigers and Orioles (starts 10/2), I am going with the Detroit Tigers, because, well Baltimore. The NLDS between the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers (begins 10/3) is also hard, normally I would go with the Dodgers because they are the blue team, and the Cardinals failed to beat the Red Sox last year (the rivalry is alive!) and they have Don Mattingly. But they are LA soooo, all right, I talked myself into it, my pick is the Dodgers.
So there you have it. After the Wild Card is done, I’ll be back to pick my teams for the rest of the Division Series.
The Baltimore Orioles came into this game with a 6-3 record and the Yankees had a 5-4 record. Now they are tied and tomorrow is the last Baltimore vs. New York Yankee game of this series. After which they will be tied no more. And while I am making effing obvious statements, the Red Sox are in last place, in the Division, in the League and in the MLB. Right now they have the worst record in baseball. I am living in the moment, shoot me.
A.J. pitched 6-⅓ innings giving up 4 runs, and he got a nice ovation for his work and his 3rd win of the season. D-Rob, Soriano and Mo pitched scoreless innings, this makes save No. 5 (564) for the Sandman. Yes he is the best closer in baseball.
So much for defense, offensively the Yankees scored 7 runs, two off a home run by Alex in the 1st and one from a 5th inning home run by Jorge. They are now tied for home runs for this season. Every Yankee except Curtis got a hit tonight. Don’t worry Curtis, Sarah still loves you, and you will turn it around.
Speaking of the Yankees, they are the winningest team. That’s not a real word, at least my spell checker doesn’t think so. If you check the numbers, they don’t have the most games won, that record goes to the the San Francisco Giants with 10,441, of course they have been around longer then the Yankees, of teams formed in 1901, the Yankees do have the most games won with 9,675, the team (of teams formed in 1901) that is number 2? No big surprise there, the Boston Red Sox.
Looking at the Win-Lose Percentage, the Yankees are again number 1 with .568, the Boston Red Sox . . . are not number 2, they are number 5 on this list. I started playing around with the numbers, I was curious if there was another stat that would correspond with the order created by the W-L%. I took the number of runs allowed and divided by the number of runs scored. The Yankees were again in 1st place with a 0.862%, the Boston Red Sox were again #5 with 0.965%. The teams didn’t match up perfectly, but it was the closest I found. So there you have it, if you consistently score more runs then you allow, you will be a winning team.
In 1954 the New York Giants won the World Series*, it would take them 56 years to win another one, this time as the San Francisco Giants. In the 1954 series, many predicted the Cleveland Indians would sweep. They had the strongest pitching rotation in baseball with a .721 winning percentage, they had “dethroned” the reigning champions the NY Yankees and the Giants had historically not done well in the post-season. The New York Giants however, had defeated the defending National League champions from 1953, the Brooklyn Dodgers, they had Willie Mays (National League-leading .345, with forty-one home runs and one-hundred ten runs batted in) and pitcher Johnny Antonelli (with twenty-one wins). this was a formidable 1-2 combination.
Game 1 was held at the Polo Grounds and the fans in attendance witnessed what is considered by many to be the greatest defensive play in World Series history. With the opener tied at 2-2 (in the eighth) and two Cleveland runners on base, Willie Mays made a spinning, over-the-shoulder catch (of a 460-foot smash from Vic Wertz) in deep centerfield and fired a bullet to the infield that held the runners from tagging up and scoring. Giants 1, Indians 0
“There’s a long drive way back in center field . . . way back, back! It is . . . oh, what a catch by (Willie) Mays! The runner on second, (Larry) Doby, is able to go to third. Willie Mays . . . just brought this crowd to its feet . . . with a catch . . . which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people. Boy!” – Jack Brickhouse of NBC-TV
In Game 2 Cleveland got a run with a first-pitch-of-the-game homer. However that was the only run they scored off Antonelli. Giants 2, Indians 0. Game 3 was played in Cleveland with the Indians hoping “home field advantage” would help them win. Unfortunately for them the Giants struck hard in the first inning and kept going beating the Indians 6-2. Giants 3, Indians 0
By the top of the fifth in game 4, it looked like New York would sweep, they were leading 7-0, then Cleveland tried to rally with a 3-run homer in the bottom of the fifth. Antonelli pitched in relief and the rally was stopped. The sweep of the series was by the Giants. Giants 4, Indians 0
In the 2010 Series, the Giants were once again considered the underdogs. The Texas Rangers were young and fast, and they had beaten the reigning champions, The New York Yankees. Those that were touting the Rangers seemed to forget that the Giants had beaten last years NL Champions to get to the World Series, thus proving that they were a team to be reckoned with. There was no sweep, the Rangers won game 3, but the Giants did win in 5 games.
And the unlikely hero of game 5? Edgar Renteria, who played 72 games this season, 72 games, I don’t know if he was injured or just benched, but he hit a 3 run home run off Cliff Lee. It was when Kasey went up to take a bath, the bath always works. Lincecum was pitching like the Cy Young winner he is (can we buy him? Someone should find a way to get him, like now) and held Texas to 1 run. How sweet to beat Texas in their own ball park. How sweet that the last out was a strike out. I mean for the last out your team makes to lose the World Series, a swing and a miss, that’s got to be embarrassing. Buster was excited, now he won’t miss any more school. I normally only do this for the Yankees, but it is the World Series, which I did watch so …. Enjoy the fireworks.
* Information about the 1954 Series found at the Baseball Almanac
This is old news now but I am weighing in with my own two cents, again. Chuck Greenberg, CEO of the Texas Rangers was on a talk show talking about Ranger’s fans when he had this to say:
“I thought Yankee fans, frankly, were awful. They were either violent or apathetic, neither of which is good. So I thought Yankee fans were by far the worst of any I’ve seen in the postseason. I thought they were an embarrassment.”
Considering the Rangers had just last week beat the Yankees and were playing (losing) in the World Series, this makes him look like, to put it mildly, an ungracious winner. Add to that the commissioner’s policy regarding respecting and not distracting from the World Series, which the Yankee’s honored by not commenting on Mr. Greenberg’s statement.
Later Monday, Greenberg issued a statement apologizing for his comments.
“Earlier today, in the course of praising the extraordinary support and enthusiasm of Texas Rangers fans, I unfairly and inaccurately disparaged fans of the New York Yankees,” he said in a statement. “Those remarks were inappropriate. Yankees fans are among the most passionate and supportive in all of baseball.
“I have spoken directly to Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine to apologize for my intemperate comments.” ~ Source
Even though he made inappropriate comments at a time when perhaps he should have been focusing on his teams performance in the World Series, considering the treatment of the players families by the fans, I suppose it was to be expected that he would say something.
Attending the World Series as the wife of a player doesn’t always bring star treatment.
There’s the heckling of the other team’s fans – and worse.
Texas Rangers outfielder Jeff Francoeur’s wife, Catie, said a rowdy San Francisco Giants fan, high off Wednesday’s victory, heaved a sandwich at the Rangers’ departing bus.
“You can tell emotions are really heightened,” said Francoeur, 26.
Family members of the Rangers sat scattered across the lower bowl of AT&T Park, along the first-base line. Giants fans interspersed with the red and blue dished out plenty of trash talk to them during the game.
“A lot of the time people don’t realize we’re family,” Francoeur said. “So we’ll take it a lot more personally than just a fan would.” ~ Source
Except these were San Francisco fans, which proves once again, that there are idiots in every fan base, and if you show up in the visiting team’s gear, expect to get heckled.
It may seem a little late to be asking this, since the Giants are up 3-1 in the series, but as Aubrey Huff said, “3-1 is great, but this is the playoffs, and teams are certainly capable of winning three straight.” So with that in mind, and since the series isn’t over until one team wins 4 games, I thought I would pose that question. If you want to answer this question, you can do it as a comment here, or comment on Facebook or just answer the question in your head.
Personally, I want the Giants to win for two reasons. One is pretty obvious. I want them to win because the Rangers beat the Yankees. Reason number two is because their roots are in New York. An interesting bit of trivia, the last time the Giants won the World Series was in 1958 when they swept the Cleveland Indians, and at that time they were the New York Giants. They never should have left New York.
Thursday I went up to the mall to get my hair done. This is a new place for me. I wasn’t thinking about baseball because even though game 2 of the World Series was being played, the Yankees weren’t playing. Imagine my surprise when I got home and baseball was on the T.V. Kasey says, “It’s baseball, even if its not the Yankees.” Giants were ahead 2 runs, it was the bottom of the 8th, and Texas was walking batters. The Texas pitcher ended up walking in 2 runs and then the Giants started hitting the ball. It looked to me (but I’m no expert) like Texas was throwing fast balls over the middle of the plate. San Francisco scored 7 runs in the 8th inning.
In my last post I was going to talk about Cliff Lee’s wife and what happened with the fans. Then I decided it has gotten enough press, and who really needs or cares to know my opinion? That made me wonder, why did she wait until after the game to say something, and why did she say it to the press? I’ve been to games and there are constant announcements about, “If you have a concern …”, “Any guest that doesn’t feel safe …”, ect. can contact guest services, and then the number is give where you can send a text message. I’m pretty sure the wife of a major league pitcher has a cell phone with a text plan. So if she was being spit at and had beer thrown at her, why didn’t she contact guest services?
Don’t take this to mean that I think she was lying, or that I think it is acceptable to spit or throw beer or yell profanity at a person (any person) I am just thinking out loud. I have not had to contact guest services or security for anything while at a game, I think that speaks to the awareness of the security staff. Also, I have seen NYPD officers all over the stadium, since spitting can be considered assault, she could have (should have) told them. Maybe she just wanted to stir things up a little. I don’t know.
The Foxx Loves the Yankees 