Cardinals

[dav4463]

I hope we don't have to listen to ....."The Cardinals are the worst champions ever.....only 83 wins......" Who cares? They won when they had to win and deserve the championship.

[PaceAdvantage]

Hell, they beat the Mets and the Tigers.....they deserve it.....


Plus, Suff liked them....and that's enough for me....:lol:

[Wiley]

The Cardinals took advantage of what was given to them, got some excellent pitching in this series and LaRussa outmanaged Leyland. I was torn in this series being a southern Illinois raised, third generation Cardinal fan who now lives in the Detroit area and really loved the Tigers this season - hard to root against them.

It was tough to see the Tigers self destruct with what 5 pitcher errors in 5 games a WS record and 9 errors overall, this given you've got one of the best fielding pitchers of all time on the team in Rogers. The Tigers played the game right all year - with quality fielding, base running, decision making, pitching, timely hitting and I think you can chalk up some of these mistakes to their youth and inexperience with a lot of young guys making mistakes and can just say Leland was not able to get them to play their normal quality baseball in this series.

Give credit to the Cardinals though who made it through tons of adversity this season with injuries and questionable pitching down the stretch but got guys back and played the way they did earlier in the year when everyone was healthy. They are a vetern club, except for Duncan who played right field like Lonnie Smith who used to play left field like he was in the Navy - 'everyday is a new adventure' and it showed against the youth of the Tigers.

I would have rather seen the games decided on great hitting and fielding then the game deciding poor decisions and fielding that surely cost the Tigers at least a shot at winning this series. I guess it was payback for the 7th game missed judged fly ball miscue by Flood that cost the Cardinals the '68 series except the Tigers had about 9 or so of those plays happen in 2006!
Congratulations to the Cardinals.

[JPinMaryland]

so much for the Tigers being helped by the off week. The Cardinals pitching was surely being stretched but the thing is it only takes a few days to resurrcet a pitchign staff. A couple of strong perforamances and a rain day and the Cardinals pitching I guess was back up to speed.

Its interesting they posted a stat about how many teams have come back from being down 3 games to 1. With this years series in the books, it makes 5 out of 40. Or precisely the amount you would expect if each teams chances to win each game were 50%.

Which if you think about it...Shouldnt the team that is up 3-1 be generally considered the better team? I mean usually we think of one team as better than the other. So one would think that the team up 3-1 shoudl win more than 7 out of 8 times. A few more anyhow. Or basebally really just a 50-50 gaem when it comes to teams that are this good?? Im thinking maybe it is just a coin flip for most of these world series (a few exceptions might be the Reds/Yankess in '76 or Pirates/Yankees in '27).

Its an interesting angle to think about it because we use that sort of assumption all the time in certain predictions. Like in football, during the second week of playoffs the team with the off week wins like 80% of the time. ANd people are saying "well the team with the off week is also at home."

Okay but home field advantage only makes 53-47% diff. in the NFL, what about the rest.."

THen they say: "Yeah but the team with homefield is also the better team that's why they have the bye."

OKay, but how much better is one team than another when they are both playoff teams? How much better can the one team be?

In baseball, I'm thinking there cannot be a whole lot of difference even though we tend to perceive one team as much better than the other. Like this year, they were saying no NL team could win this, maybe the Mets but even they would be undedogs..

[JustRalph]

Neither team played good baseball if you ask me.

The Tigers bats died a terrible death in this series.

Hooray for Sean Casey! I hope to see him back in a Reds Uniform soon.

[kenwoodallpromos]

Congrats to the Cards,cthe team that had pitching, fielding, and batting!
Just like horseracing, your record and stats does not matter, only if you cross the lihe first!LOL!!

[KirisClown]

Cardinals are the worst champions ever.. only 83 wins

[njcurveball]

I think they will go down in history as the team that won the lowest rated World Series and made Fox put on Nascar instead of baseball.

Seriously though, what Network TV executive still thinks we need to spend 15 minutes watching the players run out from the dugout as they announce their names.

Baseball needs to take some lessons from wrestling and get the people involved in the personalities and dynamics of the people playing the game. They telecast games today the same way they did 40 years ago.

Baseball purists will watch, but for most viewers 5 minutes of baseball to have 2 minutes of commercials just exercises the remotes.

You would think they would at least have a small screen at the bottom showing interesting stuff happening at the Ballpark to keep us from changing the channel when we say Arod drive the Pepsi truck for the 10th time.

AND for baseball purists, the Cardinals out-hit, out-pitched, out-fielded, out-managed, and anything else a team needs to do to win.

They deserve to be champions!

Jim

[JustRalph]

I think they will go down in history as the team that won the lowest rated World Series and made Fox put on Nascar instead of baseball.

made them put on Nascar? Nascar is the 2nd highest rated sport in the U.S.

There 130k people sitting in Atlanta motor speedway as I type this. Most tracks get two races a year. Those two days gross as much or more than most NFL teams do at their stadiums all year. Every network would dream about having Nascar. They all bid on it every year.

Baseball games are about the only thing more boring than some of these Nascar races. If it weren't for being able to watch a Nascar race on the DVR , I wouldn't watch hardly any. Two many young guns for my taste anymore.

[njcurveball]

There 130k people sitting in Atlanta motor speedway as I type this.


Ahhhh, I guess the 4 million in Yankee Stadium cannot compare to 130,000, huh? ;)

I never said Nascar wasn't popular, just said that because of the low ratings Fox is replacing baseball with it. IF Baseball was having HUGE ratings, Nascar couldn't even get a sniff of their exhaust.

Now I am curious how you call it the 2nd highest rated sport? I am sure there are statistics to make baseball the most popular in many areas.

If you mean TV ratings, how can you compate something that comes on only on some weekends, against a sport on almost every night?

Do you know what the biggest impact to Monday Night Football was? It was Sunday Night Football! More nights = less viewers.

You did make me laugh though, Baseball is the ONLY thing MORE boring than Nascar races. :D You ever watch golf? It is soooo exciting trying to find that lil white ball on TV as the guys whisper about how great a shot it was. :bang:

Today on ESPN they had a HOT DOG Eating contest. On our local Comcast Sports, there was a Darts championship.

Jim

[dav4463]

I must be a boring guy. I like to watch baseball and golf !

....and basketball, football, horseracing, and hockey.

NO SOCCER !!! That's the only sport that really bores me.

Also, hate fake sports like X-games and 99% of Olympic sports.

[JustRalph]

"In a National Review article not long ago, the writer, awestruck, broke the stats down like this: "Nascar's Winston Cup, the biggest of the three 'major league' series in the stock car racing calendar, drew 6.7 million ticketed spectators last year, an average of 186,000 per event. By way of comparison, paid attendance for the N.F.L. in 2002 averaged 66,000 per event, for major league baseball 28,000, for N.B.A. basketball 17,000. TV viewership for a Nascar race runs around 15 million to 20 million. The same as for many Major League Baseball playoff games."
…

above is some info from the National Review. Remember, all 43 teams race at the same venue every week and these numbers don't count the Busch Series and Truck Series which are at the same track on Friday and Saturday nights about 2/3's of the weekends from the 3rd week in February to November.

One reason I don't attend races anymore is that they are so damn crowded.

just an FYI.