Reality can be so cruel, can't it? For alot of people, when you talk about Fisk, you might as well say Rogers Hornsby.Damien wrote:1975 is not the Modern Era? God, I'm old.
So, the Cardinals are champions of baseball, after a Game 7 that unfortunately fell a time zone short of the impact of its immediate predecessor. I don't think a whole lot of people would argue St. Louis was actually the BEST team, but baseball long ago gave up caring much about that. Even in the two-divisions-per-league era we got questionable champs like the '85 Royals and '87 Twins. Since the Wild Card was thrown into the mix, it's all become a lottery, and you just hope for an entertaining one.
On that score, we got all we could have asked for (except a closer game tonight). The current post-season set-up allows a maximum 41 games; we got 38, which has to be easily the most in the past decade or more. Best of all, a winner-take-all Game 7 on the sport's final night. Damien, it's an even stronger sign you're getting old if you remember when seven-game series were regular occurrences, not baseball's equivalent of Halley's Comet. In our earliest years, seven-gamers were routine -- between 1952 and 1975, 15 of the 24 Series went the full seven. The rate waned a bit over the decade following, but still there were another five prior to 1987. That's when the drought began: in the 24 years since '87, only five series have gone the distance, including tonight's. No wonder baseball ratings have declined. Let's hope that era was a statistical fluke, and that we'll see more pitched battles like this rather than the dreary 4-5 game series to which we've become accustomed (and, yes, I acknowledge my own team was responsible for some of them).
Oddity: alot of folks DID think the Cards were the best team in baseball in '04, when they fell in four. But they've rallied to win two championships since, in years when they had about the worst record of any team qualifying.
So...when does Spring Training start?
