The Chris Moeller Archives

National pride

To St. Louis Cardinals fans last week, ESPN.com wiseacre Bill Simmons scribbled, "Look at it from my vantage point-- your team is five games over .500 in a CLEARLY inferior league and only managed one run combined against John Maine and Oliver Perez in the deciding games of a playoff series. I know you're happy about playing in the World Series, but you can't honestly think you have a great team, right? I don't know a single person outside of Detroit and St. Louis who's excited about the 2006 World Series."

If baseball's television ratings do suffer during this Fall Classic, perhaps it will be because the Tigers and Cardinals failed to separate their individual World Championships by 89 years like Simmons' beloved Red Sox. Boston fans, meet Chris Carpenter. You didn't have to face him in the 2004 Series thanks to a biceps injury. Be grateful.

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I want to say this also about the Cardinals after they took a two games to one lead tonight on Detroit in the best of seven Series. They're going to go at least six games against a team that blew away the Yankees, and annihilated the Athletics, who swept the Twins. And if they manage to win this series, that would be two National League championships in the last four years, and the Seniors didn't have home field advantage in any of those finals. That would be pretty damn impressive when you figure that only two teams won the World Series without home field advantage between 1984 and 2003. As that great National League failure Casey Stengel once said, "You can look it up."

posted by CM @ 10:44 PM