The Holtonian

This is not the worst world series ever.... a long rant

Worst world series ever? Definitely not for a St. Louis fan, and if the tigers come back they'll say it was the best ever as well. This whole, "Ooooh, the ratings are so bad, we need better ratings, why is it so bad? It must be because the teams are bad..."

No!!!! Look you can't have the redsox, mets, yanks, or dodgers in every WS. I'd include the cubs in that list... but please. In sports occasionally a city that's not so big or a team that's not so dominate or flashy, wins. Look at the Spurs, the NBA can't stand when the Spurs are in the finals because they're a small market team, but hey they're good and good at the fundamentals and that's why they get there. They're also one of the best teams in the past 10 years and have some of the best fans... Like my red birds.

Secondly, the record of the cardinals is not indicative of their, "goodness." In reality they'd be the second best team in the NL if not for injuries all year. Izzy, Mulder, Edmonds, Rolen, Eckstein, Pujols, Molina, all of these guys went down sometime this year. Plus they didn't have a solid number 4 pitcher. Started off with Ponson, he stunk, went to Reyes, he was inconsistent, then finally stuck with Weaver. So it was a team that struggled with injuries all year but in the end its pretty much the same team from last year, a 100 win team, minus Gruz and Sanders.

Thirdly, this is a team that has realized its not the regular season that matters, its the post season. That's why Larussa rested Carpenter at the end of the season, and trusted his team to get them into the playoffs. He knew he had to have Carp ready for the post season and that the rest of the team could take care of the rest.

So, therefore I've proven that this is not the worst team to make it to the WS, record wise yes, but talent wise no.

So why are the ratings so bad, should we penalize teams from small markets? Or let NY teams have automatically make it to the second round of the playoffs? Listening to Mike and Mike this morning they were talking as if the team with the better record should have even more homefield advantage... The better team should be able to win regardless of where they're playing so that's stupid.

The ratings are bad in my mind because of what baseball has done to itself. Steroids, dirty balls, and high priced players. They did a survey (yes 'they' did, I'm not sure who 'they' is but 'they' did it) and people's number one complaint about baseball was the high priced players, second was high priced tickets something Kyle alluded to, third was steroids, and fourth was something lame.

All these reasons for people not liking baseball have some validity to them. I think steroids and the cheating aspect has hurt baseball the most, people just don't trust it that much anymore. When a pitcher in the WS gets away with cheating and the umps don't do a thing then its hard to take the game seriously.

As far as the money goes, unless the MLB does what the NFL does then salaries aren't going to change. (And I don't think the cap has really kept NFL salaries down all that much) But in the end people shouldn't care what they make, because frankly sometimes the best player is the rookie who's making 200k and proving himself. The high priced players aren't always the best... see Arod's postseason stats. Also I think the NFL's system is weak as frankly I like the capitalism baseball has. If the Yanks, Mets, and Red Sox want to try and buy WS go ahead, its proven it doesn't work. The NFL's parity is kind of lame because there is no way a team can hold together for more than a few years. The patriots did it, but frankly I don't think any team will do it like they did for quite sometime. The Steelers definitely aren't going to be back.

Ticket prices are high, but its capitalism. Its disappointing to see the trend in stadiums being smaller so that more can be charged for ticket prices, but what the market will pay is what the tickets should cost. Plus that is the fun of going to the Lookouts game for 5 bucks, you see baseball at a price you can afford. People always talk about down here seeing Adam Dunn nail homers out of Bellsouth Park. Take Josh Kinney, I'm sure St. Louis fans recall with fondness him playing for the River City Mud cats or dogs or whatever. I think its great to see these minor and independent leagues doing so well. The games are fun to go to and cheap.

So that's a bit of a rant, but I'm tired of all this Worst WS ever crap. The past two ones were pretty boring for me, sweeps aren't that fun to watch. These games have been great, close and so much strategy on the NL games that its been fun to watch the head games between Leyland and Larussa.

Go Cards

Posted by holtonian at October 27, 2006 09:35 AM | TrackBack