Cubs Win! Cubs Win!

"Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again." - Red Smith

Chicago and Cleveland just murdered fiction all over again. A magnificent end to a magnificent series. Nobody "choked". Nobody blew it. This was two teams going at it for all they were worth, with two managers trying every trick in the book (some more successful than others - what the hell was that bunt, Joe?) to squeeze the absolute utmost out of their teams. 

Thanks, guys, for letting us squeeze just a little bit more out of the season.

And please, Cubs fans - take a good look at Red Sox Nation. Don't be that. Just...don't.

Eleven Takeaways From The World Series

With a hearty congratulation to the Kansas City Royals, a "that was a hell of a season" to the New York Mets, and a "oh crap, 108 days until pitchers and catchers report" for the rest of us:

1. It doesn't matter how good your pitching staff is, it really, really helps if your fielders remember how to catch the ball.

We Missed One

A while back, we speculated on the contrived "New York - Kansas City" angle the media would go for during this World Series.

World Series Math

In case there are any other nerds out there who like sports out there, this article is for you.  In a recent post I mentioned that my brother-in-law got tickets to game 3, so even if his team (the Mets) win he won't be able to see it.

That got me thinking about probabilities, so I crunched some number for you (you can thank me by reading this):

Mets - Royals Storylines

Behold the Patron Saint Of This World Series!

With a Royals - Mets World Series staring us in the face, the time has come to ponder which ridiculous narratives the media is going to try to pin on this thing. Sure, the Cubs would have made it easy for those guys - billy goats, curses, etc. - but Royals-Mets? Where do you go from there? Well, it may be one of the following:

World Series - Final Thought

Madison Bumgarner has a terrible nickname.

Seriously. "MadBum". That's the sort of thing you expect to hear attached to a minor character in a Monty Python skit, or maybe used as an insult when the Gallagher boys from Oasis are feuding again. It doesn't even fit into the sort of pre-fab model of modern baseball nicknames, where you either add a "-sey" to a  guy's last name, or take his first initial and the first syllable of his last name and get something that I'm pretty much started out as an internet "What's Your Porn Star Name?" meme.

Royal Thank A Twin

Here is what we know about the World Series:

It may be decided by Glen Perkins. Perkins, some of you may note, plays for the Minnesota Twins. The Twins, some of you may further note, are not playing in the World Series. As a matter of fact, they got about as close to the Series as I currently am to the Coachella Valley and the big carrot festival therein, which is to say "not very".

Observations From The Third Deck, World Series Edition

Friday, I was lucky enough to attend game 3 of the World Series. Hitting a World Series game has been a dream of mine since I was old enough to be called out for being terrible at baseball (as opposed to when I was younger than that and simply lacked the small motor skills to do things like "catch" and "throw a two-seamer", and so, when the opportunity materialized (courtesy of friend and occasional Sportsthodoxy contributor), I went. 

Now, I have been to a lot of baseball games in my time. Majors, minors, good games, bad games, games where I helped heckle Von Hayes into incoherent confusion and games where Mike Schmidt turned around and gave my dad the finger. (True story. I swear.) I'd even been to a playoff game before - though that was in Atlanta, so it didn't entirely count. But there is nothing like a World Series game. A few notes from the seething cauldron of orange-and-black noise that was AT&T Park...

Your Handy Dandy Guide To Stupid Baseball Think-Pieces

Now is the season when writers and talk show hosts who have paid absolutely no attention to baseball for the last six months suddenly develop Very Important Opinions on things, and share those opinions with the world. It should not come as a terrible surprise, however, that most of those opinions are about as finely considered and well thought out as your average episode of Challenge of the Superfriends.

Fortunately, we're here to make sense of all this newly minted brilliance, largely so you don't have to. Just sit back and let us translate pundit to English by way of baseball:

We're Doomed: World Series Ratings Edition (Again)

The transcript of a conversation held inside Fox Sports HQ last night after the baseball scores went final.

EXECUTIVE ONE: Oh crap, we're doomed.

EXECUTIVE TWO: What do you mean?

EXECUTIVE ONE: The American League. We thought we were going to get LA-

The Don'ts of the World Series

There are things you don't do if you want to win a World Series game:

• You don't leave your best pinch hitter on the bench.
• You don't let a relief pitcher get his first major league at bat in the ninth inning of a World Series game because you're hoping to extend him, and then pull him one out later.
• You don't make a lousy throw to third when there's basically no chance you'll get the runner.
• You don't leave your starting pitcher in to face the top of the opponent's lineup for the third time, not when he's visibly tiring and you've got an army of flamethrowers waiting to come out of the pen.
• You don't pitch Craig Breslow.
• You don't trust Will Middlebrooks' D, because it looks like he flinches every time a ball comes his way.
• You don't leave Jarrod Saltalamacchia out there in the late innings, not when you've got better defensive options.
• You don't pitch to Big Papi. He's hitting over .700. The rest of the Red Sox are hitting sub-BJ-Upton.
• You don't walk Stephen Drew. Ever.

Most of these are the little things, the things that happen in the heat of the moment or that seem kind of defensible at the time. But it's the little things that get you, especially when it's two teams so evenly matched. Something as simple as a rookie slipping cost the Cardinals game 4; something as simple as having David Ross in for defense would have prevented two bad throws to third, throws that cost the Red Sox games 2 and 3.

So the lesson is clear. Don't do these things. Don't give the opponent any advantage they didn't earn for themselves, not in a Series so evenly matched. 

To date, the Sox have not done a few more of these than the Cardinals. That's why they're up 3 games to 2. But they've made their share of mistakes, too, given away their share of gifts. If they do it again tonight, we're going seven. If it's the Cards who are feeling generous, then it's the first clinching celebration at Fenway since the Babe was a left handed pitcher.
But it all depends, not on what they do, but what they don't do.

A Hint of Obstruction

There are two lessons to take away from last night's game 3 of the World Series (3, if you count "don't let your short reliever who has never batted before in the major leagues get his first big league at-bat against a flame-throwing demon in the 9th inning of a World Series game because you're expecting to get another full inning out of him and then pull him after just one out).

Your 2012 World Series Champs

The Tigers were supposed to be unstoppable.
They were well-rested, having dispatched the mighty Yankees in humiliating fashion. The Bronx Bombers left Detroit a circus, dismantled on the field by the Tigers' pitching and power, and off the field by their clubhouse issues, A-Rod's pickup lines and the ever-opportunistic New York media. That left the Tigers plenty of time to sit back, rest their pitchers, and set up the T-1000 disguised as Justin Verlander to inflict maximum damage on whoever staggered out of the NLCS.
The Giants were supposed to be doomed. Their 2-time Cy Young winner was relegated to the bullpen, a Loki lookalike who'd spent the year figuratively being thrashed by the Hulk. They'd dug themselves a 3-1 hole against the seemingly unkillable Cardinals, with their late-season sparkplug among the walking wounded, starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner was no longer on speaking terms with the strike zone, and they faced the terrifying specter of starting Barry Zito in a playoff game.
Of course Kung Fu Panda was going to hit three bombs and chase Verlander in the opener. Of course the Tigers, with Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera squatting athwart the middle of their lineup, were going to get shut out in games 2 and 3. Of course the Giants' bullpen, comprised seemingly entirely of Kansas City Royals castoffs, would be untouchable. And of course the Series would end with Cabrera whiffing on a pitch from replacement closer Sergio Romo, whose job description out of the pen was largely "replacement beard".
So much for conventional wisdom. So much for inevitable.
Thank you, baseball. I'll see you in the spring.