The World [yawn] Series

The World (yawn) Series

If you would have asked me back in March to give you a list of teams I didn’t want to see in the World Series, Boston and St. Louis would have not only been on the list but they would have been at the top of the list.

I used to like the Red Sox. Eighty-six years without a championship made them, to me, America’s Team. The team for the average shlub like me: the guy who works hard and dreams big but for one reason or another falls just a little bit short. Like Carlton Fisk waving that ball fair in the 1975 World Series and winning the game in the most dramatic fashion possible, but losing the series. You could watch the Red Sox and dream.

Then came 2004 and the Red Sox, and Curt Schilling’s goofy bloody sock (not one but two bloody socks!) (and why in the world is that bloody sock in the Hall of Fame?) won the World Series and suddenly the Red Sox were everywhere, or so it seemed. Suddenly Johnny Damon’s hair is news. Suddenly Manny Ramirez’s hair is news. Suddenly Ben Affleck is shown sitting in the first row at every televised game. Suddenly you can’t turn on a Sunday night game on ESPN without seeing the Red Sox play the Yankees. Sadly, the Red Sox became the Red Sucks.

And the Cardinals. I used to like them, too – back in the 1930’s when I read books about the Gashouse Gang. And as a guy growing up it was hard not to like guys like Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver and Lou Brock and Ozzie Smith and Bob Gibson (with whom I share a birthday). But then came Mark McGwire. And Tony La Russa. And the fact that I don’t like Budweiser beer. And that I don’t like teams whose fans refer to themselves as the best fans in baseball. My dislike of the Cardinals isn’t as deep as Drew Magary when he referred to Cardinal fans as, “…poorly disguised Yankees fans in ugly Christmas sweaters carrying a Jell-O mold to your neighbor’s door.”, but it’s still not very pretty. I just have a thing for successful teams. Or an anti-thing, depending on how you want to look at it.

So I couldn’t care less who wins the World Series.

If you’re going to pressure me for a prediction then part of me wants the Red Sox to win because they have a couple of ex-Twins on the roster and one, Craig Breslow, was a guy I liked when he pitched for the Twins and the other, David Ortiz, reminds me, every time I see him or hear his name, how bad the Twins organization is. But then the other part of me wants the Cardinals to win because… I don’t know, because I like National League baseball better than American League baseball and I like teams with small payrolls. (Not that the Cardinals have a small payroll but their $102.7 million places them in the middle of the pack and is quite a bit lower than the Red Sox’s $140.6 million)

My prediction: Because Boston has the home-field advantage I’ll go with them. Whoever wins, I just hope it’s in four games because I can’t handle more than four games from either of these teams.

And off the topic of the World Series? Can someone tell me why the Giants signed Tim Lincecum to a $35 million, two-year contract?

So let’s see, what have we got – about 118 days until Spring Training?