World Series

St. Louis Cardinals are your World Series Champions! I'm obviously stunned, even after game one, I thought the most likely scenario was a 4-1 series win for the Tigers. But good for them, the strangest part is that Albert Pujols didn't have a very good series. If you'd told me that The Cards would win, I would've predicted at least 3 homers for big Al, but for the most part he was pitched around and he hit only .200 for the series. Does this represent a referendum on the resume of the National League? Probably not, 5 games is a small sample and The Tigers were clearly not themselves. I don't know if it was a result of the long layoff between the ALCS and World Series or if the pressure just caught up with a lot of these players, but they looked like a completely different team this week. They made a lot of errors and they couldn't hit any of the Cardinals pitchers. Being shut down by Chris Carpenter? Well that happens, but when Jeff Weaver goes eight strong, then your team is in a bad slump.

David Eckstein was named MVP. I think he went hitless for the first two games, then had a couple hits in game 3, in game 4 he was aided greatly by Detroit's struggling defense, he should've gone 2 for 5 with one RBI but instead he was 4 for5 and had a couple runs scored and a couple RBIs. So Eckstein became MVP because the field was too wet for Curtis Granderson to change direction and Craig Monroe took an awful angle to a ball, both in game 4. I just want to make sure no one thinks this is any sort of excuse for the Tigers, they deserved to lose. In Game 4 even after the gift double because of the wet grass, the Tigers did plenty to help the Cardinals cause.

The Cardinals used to be my favorite team in the '80s, aside from the Red Sox of course. But now I can't stand them. I don't like Pujols at all, and I defnitely am tired of Tony LaRussa, but more importantly, I miss their old style. I loved Vince Coleman, Terry Pendelton and Willie McGee. McGee, while not exactly Denzel Washington in terms of looks, was a great centerfielder for them. I would argue that Willie McGee deserves to be in the Hall-of-Fame over Ozzie Smith.

The Wizard fo Oz has become one of the more overrated players in the history of the game, he was a very good fielder, but he couldn't hit at all until the late 80s. Omar Vizquel probably won't sniff the Hall of Fame, but he's Ozzie's equal as a fielder and was a superior hitter. Ozzie just got a lot of notoriety for his flash, he was exciting to watch and lets not forget he used to do a flip on his way out to field his position every game.

Anyway, I guess it's a good thing that very few read this blog, otherwise I'd be getting hate mail from St. Louis. That's all I've got for today.

-Bender Out