Been a good amount of time since I've checked in with how the baseball season has progressed, but thankfully plenty of good things to report, such as...
Boston Red Sox vs. St. Louis Cardinals
That's the 2013 World Series match-up. As you may recall, both teams are personal favorites, and had exceptional years all season long. The Red Sox in particular, above and beyond a rebuilding year, were magnificent, getting able contributions all around, even though there was a massive hiccup for Clay Buccholz, who had the best season he's ever pitched...until being sidelined for most of the season, although he's since returned and contributed fairly well in the post-season.
Both the Sox and Cardinals are no strangers to the World Series. Boston historically faced the 86 year drought after the 1918 title (the year before the infamous Black Sox scandal, which featured the Chicago White Sox, as well as the foolish trade of Babe Ruth), snapped in 2004 (a season chronicled in Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan's Faithful) and repeated for emphasis in 2007. The Cardinals have won recently in 2006 and 2011, and were also the team the Red Sox defeated in '04.
The Oakland A's continued to perform well throughout the season, reaching the division series, first level play of the post-season before being eliminated by the Detroit Tigers, where coincidentally Jose Iglesias had ended up during the season. Iglesias was a standout fill-in for Boston at the start of the season, remarked upon here, and so it's great that he found somewhere to perform on a regular basis in the Majors.
The only team I followed that didn't do spectacularly was the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, although Mike Trout's season picked up considerably after I stopped tracking baseball here. His sophomore year started to feel like an improvement over his remarkable rookie season. He ended up with a .323 batting average. Albert Pujols missed the end of the season with the same sort of health issues that have been plaguing him since coming to the Angels two seasons ago. He ended with a .258 BA. Mark Trumbo, the other player I was tracking, finished at .234, and I probably won't be following his stats again.
No matter who wins the World series I win, but I'm pulling for hometown favorite Boston.
5 comments:
I'm pulling for the Sox, even though I know it will make all of the Boston fans around me insufferable for years to come. Of course, that's likely to happen if they lose, too.
I hate both teams so hopefully a meteor falls from the sky to crush both teams while they're playing.
Squid, we're real equal opportunity like that. You may not be able to properly appreciate the amount of despair we felt after the 2003 season. It was awful.
Pat, you can do that, and like the T-1000 we'll just regenerate and keep coming at you.
Oh no, I know all about the despair of '03. I can't tell you how happy I was to see them knock off the Yanks in '04. The WS was just gravy after that. Lifting the curse? I get it. But Boston sports fans have had a pretty decent run in the current century. Enough, already!
We ride the train for as long as possible? You know how many titles the Yankees have???
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