Hello, dearest readers! As we all know, the Rockies season is over. An extremely disappointing end of the season for Rockies fans, but now is not the time to discuss the Rockies. That time is a few weeks away, when the World Series is over, the snow is falling, and there is literally nothing better to do than to discuss what may or may not happen a few months from now when life begins again. Right now, though, as baseball fans, we still have plenty to talk about. So today, I am phoning in my opinions on the playoff series as they now stand.
Texas Rangers 2-0 over Tampa Rays
Many seem surprised that the Rangers jumped all over the Rays in Tampa, and are headed back to Texas up two games to none in the best-of-five Division Series. Not me, I saw this one coming and am not surprised at all. First of all, the Rangers can hit the ball. And by "hit," I mean "beat the ever-living crap out of." They are 2nd in the majors in batting average, 5th in on-base percentage, 6th in total bases, and 27th in strikeouts. Vlad Guerrero -- always one of The Beard's favorite players -- looks reborn in Texas, and it's finally time for The Beard to admit that Josh Hamilton is one of the most talented baseball players he's ever seen. This team absolutely mashes the ball, and they will be hard to beat without a stellar pitching performance.
Second, many baseball fans go on and on about Tampa winning the AL East, The Toughest Division In Baseball, and just assume that a team that can win that division must be nigh unbeatable. But the AL East myth just has to die one of these days, and perhaps the day the Rangers sweep the Rays will be that day. Yes, there are some good teams in the AL East. Yeah, the Rays are a damn good team, good enough to edge out the Yankees... but overall, there are some pretty mediocre teams in the AL, and everybody gets to beat up on them, AL East included. Winning the AL East doesn't make the Rays one bit stronger than the teams that won the other divisions in the AL... or the NL, for that matter.
New York Yankees 2-0 over Minnesota Twins
This one does surprise me a little bit, but maybe it shouldn't have. The Yankees are the wild card team, edged by the Rays on the last couple days of the season. The Twins, playing outside for the first time in decades, had a great season. However, they finished the year with a whimper, going 2-8 over their final ten games, and now must win two in Pretend Yankee Stadium to get the series back home for a 5th game.
Can they do it? Not if they keep going into the 9th needing runs to catch up. Mariano Rivera, at age 40, is just an astoundingly good pitcher. How, exactly, does he do it? He throws one pitch! Throws it in the same exact place every time! Nobody can hit it! Nobody's been able to hit it for fifteen years! It's like a magic trick, but it's a trick he shows you how he's doing it, but you still can't figure it out. Rivera is the MVP of all time as far as I am concerned. All that money that Steinbrenner (may he burn in hell) spent on that team wouldn't have meant squat without Rivera. He's that good.
Philadelphia Phillies 2-0 over Cincinnati Reds
Roy Halladay waits twelve years to pitch in the postseason, and when he finally gets the chance, he throws a no-hitter. The Cincinnati Reds wait 15 years to make it to the postseason, and the day after getting no-hit, they get a lead on the Phillies and then promptly fumble it away. The Phillies are a great team. The Reds are an up-and-coming team and they might win a game in this series, but they just don't have what it takes to hang with the Phillies.
On a side note, though, it's sad when a team as good as the Phillies has to lie to win a game. In game two, Chase Utley pretended to get hit by a pitch, and went to first. The ump did not stop him. I'm tired of hearing the "a batter's job is to get to first base in any way possible" arguments to justify stuff like this. Utley is a liar, and not only should he not have gone to first, but when he started trotting out there, he should have been ejected from the game. Bad karma, Philly.
Atlanta Braves 1-1 vs. San Francisco Giants
Speaking of bad karma, we come to the Giants. Right before the Giants (only 1.5 games ahead of the Rockies) came to Coors Field in late September for one of the biggest series of the season, they promptly complained to MLB about the Rockies' use of the humidor, accusing them of cheating by swapping in non-humidored baseballs when the Rockies were at bat late in games. The Rockies proceeded to lose two of three to the Giants, and nine of their next ten games overall, to fall completely out of the playoff chase. Whether this accusation affected the Rockies and facilitated their nosedive to end the season (they'd already been swept by the D-backs before the SF series started) is tough to say, but points to the Giants for some well-timed gamesmanship.
However, when a team can accuse another of cheating with ABSOLUTELY no proof, and the league actually agrees with them, that's a sad state of affairs, and it should bring mega-bad karma to the Giants... and to MLB for that matter. There should never have been a change of rules mid-season (to say nothing of right before one of the biggest series of the season), and any change of procedure such as this one should have been aimed at all teams, not just the Rockies. So, while I typically pull for NL West teams in the postseason, I am counting on karma to swing around big-time and kick the Giants in the ass, and it might have started last night.
Looking like jack-o-lanterns, the Giants were up 4-0, cruising through five innings. They helped the Braves get a run in the 6th on an error, and the Braves then tied the game against the typically solid Giants bullpen by scoring three in the 8th, aided by another Giants error. Rick Ankiel -- making a long-overdue withdrawal from the postseason karma bank -- absolutely crushes an 11th inning pitch into the bay, and the Giants go quietly in the bottom of the inning to give the Braves the win. Watch out, Giants. The Braves are not a great team, but they didn't make the playoffs by spreading shady, unfounded rumors about their competition, either.
Hello, friends! It is I, Ryan Spilborghs' Beard! Alas, I have not returned from the depths of the universe with good news. Although I do intend to touch base very soon with some thoughts about the Rockies' offseason moves, I'm afraid today's update is a sad reminder of how rarely sports heroes and true heroes intersect, and how few of those rare people we have left among us.
Thank you, Bob Feller. At age 17, you struck out 17 batters in a single game. You won 20 games in a season before your 21st birthday. You struck out 348 batters in a single season. You could throw a baseball faster than a speeding motorcycle. Oh, and on December 8, 1941, practically before FDR had breathed the words "live in infamy," you had abandoned perhaps the most promising pitching career in baseball history and had signed up for service in the US Navy, where you won eight battle stars before you returned to baseball and a grateful country.
