Okay, before I give my LCS and World Series predictions, and word or two on that Cardinals-Nationals game last night:
Unbelievable.....Are you kidding me?....Daniel Descalso and Pete Kozma????.....Wow!
If you care enough to be reading this, you already know what happened, so I won't recount the sequence of events, but I ask you, is there anything in sports better than October baseball?
While watching the game, I was also on Facebook and Twitter and when the eight inning began, I stated that I was giving the Cardinals "a 40% chance of pulling this one out". After Descalso's home run I raised it to 50%. In the top of ninth after Beltran doubled, I said that if Holliday got a hit the Cards would win. That didn't happen, but when Freese walked, I then said 70%. When Descalso's hit tied the game I stopped setting odds. I knew, everyone knew, that the Nats were now dead. Kozma's two RBI's just made it official.
You know all the cliches, but it is so, so true: you can't hold the ball and let the clock run out; you have to get 27 outs. Plain and simple. It's beautiful and heartbreaking all at once.
As I looked at the crowd shots. my mind flashed on three such moments:
1972 - Bob Moose's wild pitch in LCS. Reds win.
1992 - Francisco Cabrera and Sid Bream. Need I say More?
1994 - In the final seconds of the AFC Championship game, Neil O'Donnell's fourth down pass at the goal line falls incomplete. Steelers lose, Chargers go to the Super Bowl. I was at that one, and I will never forget how quiet 60,000 people can become in an instant.
Now, what happens next.
NLCS - Cardinals over the Giants. Not going to go into a lot of analysis here. After last year's World Series and then last night's game, somebody is going to actually have to drive a stake through Gussie Busch's heart before I'll pick against the Cardinals again.
ALCS - Those were two pretty dramatic division series staged by the American League, weren't they? The Yankees are the Yankees, and it's hard to pick against them, but I'm going to pick the Tigers on the hunch that they will be carried by Justin Verlander, and that Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder will come to life and overcome the pinstripers. I only hope that the pitching rotations for each team will set up so that we will see at least one Verlander-Sabbathia match up.
On the subject of the Yankees, what Joe Girardi did with Alex Rodriguez took a real set of managerial cujones. Pinch hitting for him not once, but twice, with games and the season on the line, and then outright benching him in Game Five. Wow. The NYC tabloids are going to have a field day over the off season with this new chapter in the A-Rod Soap Opera.
World Series - A rematch of the 1934 and 1968 Fall Classics, both won by the Cardinals in seven games. As I said above, I'm not going to go against the Cardinals again. Justin Verlander will get two starts and two wins, but St. Louis wins Game Seven, probably in improbable fashion, and get back-to-back Series' titles.
One final observation. When the TBS cameras zeroed in on Wolf Blitzer sitting in a luxury box, my mind flashed forward to the Nats in the World Series and how the Fox cameras would be giving us crowd shots of every Inside-the-Beltway punjab imaginable. I'm picturing a scene of John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and Harry Reid sitting together while Joe Buck sappily tells the world how "baseball unites everyone"....Cabinet officers, Supreme Court Justices, not to mention all the Fox News talking heads. At least we will be spared of that. Instead, we'll see the usual - stars of Fox's lame sitcoms bundled up in the cold and pretending to be baseball fans.
Bring it on!!
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