And congratulations to the Cardinals for winning another well-fought championship series. I may be 0 for 2 this October, but I've still got my silver linings: 1) Now I don't have to feel compelled to stay up way past my bedtime to watch the games to the end; 2) I won't have to shell out $26 per ticket in "convenience" and "handling" charges for standing room or an obstructed view; 3) By avoiding a Red Sox-Astros World Series, there will be one less metaphorical crutch for hack pundits to lean on during the last week of the Presidential campaign. Bloggers everywhere rejoice.
With the end of the season comes the start of the Carlos Beltran bidding wars. Some things don't need to wait:
The mid-market Astros will have a difficult time coming up with enough money to keep Beltran
UPDATE: The Beltran BS is worse than I thought. Argh!
Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 22, 2004 to Baseball | TrackBackHopefully, the curse of Bob Gibson will lead the Cardinals to a World Series win. :-)
By the way, you forgot to mention the $75 or so for the ticket before the "convience", "handling", and "we got you by the short ones, so pay up" fees.
Posted by: William Hughes on October 22, 2004 8:42 AMIt was obvious to me by the 4th inning that the Astros were not going to be scoring many more runs. They could not get anything going with RISP (Ausmus' strikeout with a 2-1 lead and runners on 1st and 3rd really hurt), and the #2-5 hitters went completely AWOL. I suppose you have to give the Cardinals' pitching some credit there, as well as Edmonds for that $!%@^$# catch that prevented Houston from taking a healthy early lead.
I think the Astros' loss was (a) inevitable (for reasons I'll explain in a minute), and (b) bad for Boston.
In Houston and Boston, we would have had one of two long-standing, some would say "cursed," droughts in MLB. One of them would have to give if the 'Stros and the Sox faced off. Either Houston gets the monkey off the back and wins one, or Yankee fans could no longer use "1918" or "The Curse" any more.
Either of these are blessed events and long-time "curse-busters." That's why a Red Sox-Astros matchup just couldn't happen. The Baseball Gods wouldn't allow a situation where the outcome MUST be a sign of the impending Apocalypse. Had the Yankees beaten the Sox, it would have been possible for the 'Stros to advance. But then, the Baseball Gods would have given us a Yankees victory, the Worst Of All Outcomes.
With the Cardinals you have a team that's won a few, battling no long-time demons (unless you include Don Denkinger's '85 performance) and have won it all as recently as 1982. With the Cards in the Series, the Baseball Gods now have an outcome that will prevent them from forcing the Apocalypse. This is why the Cardinals winning is bad news for Boston. With another luckless postseason team like the Astros in there, the BoSox had a chance to exorcise all the demons of the last 86 years. But not with the Cardinals, a team with a history of reasonable October success.
For that reason, the Cards win it in 6.
Unrelated to the game itself (GO CARDS!!!), I thought I'd mention that fully half the crowd at the sports bar I watched the game in last night cheered when Richard Morrison's ad came on during the game.
Posted by: Pete on October 22, 2004 9:31 AMI am Not A Baseball Person, but I'm glad we dodged the political implications of a Houston-Boston series (not that Bush is a Houstonian!). I'm mostly ready for it to be over.
I had no real opinion about who should win the World Series until this morning, when a charming Boston fan I know convinced me by his attitude toward the Astros that Boston should eat dirt and die in four games.
Posted by: Ginger on October 22, 2004 9:43 AMI just want to see the Red Sox win the World Series...their fans deserve it.
I am especially psyched that they beat the Yankees, because I hypothesized last year that the Sox beating the Yanks would be a good omen for the Democrats, who had their convention in Boston, since the GOP convention was in NYC. The fact that Boston is John Kerry's hometown makes the Red Sox victory an extra good omen.
Posted by: Anti-Bush t-shirts, buttons, and more on October 22, 2004 11:04 AM