Cardinals vs. Red Sox

It turns out  Major League Baseball could have just skipped three rounds of Playoffs and had the St. Louis and Boston, the teams with the best records in their Leagues go directly to the World Series this year.  This would have made the purists who long for the days of two eight team leagues happy, but it sure would have deprived fans in Pittsburgh of a lot of excitement this Fall.

This is the fourth time that these two teams meet in the Fall Classic, so expect to see a lot of the following:

• Black & white highlights of Enos Slaughter's "mad dash" to home plate, and endless debates about whether or not Johnny Pesky held the ball too long.
• Nostalgic hand wringing over Ted Williams' poor performance in that '46 Series and how Ol' Teddy Ballgame never got to another one.  
• Ditto for Stan Musial.
• Interviews with Bob Gibson and Carl Yastrzemski.
• Personal reminiscences from everybody's favorite announcer, Tim McCarver, who batted .125 with 2 RBIs in the '67 Series.
• A complete and total overdose of Neil Diamond and "Sweet Caroline".

I would also hope that MLB and Fox might work in some feature about '67 Cardinals star Curt Flood, and how his efforts sowed the seeds for the multi-million dollar salaries being earned by the players participating in this year's World Series, but I won't hold my breath waiting for that.

My call - the Cardinals in six games.  Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina to be the stars in the Cardinals' Series win.   

And, hey, wouldn't a Gibson-pitching-to-McCarver be a great First Pitch for one of the games in St. Louis?  We can only hope that the punjabs in the offices of Bud "Bud" Selig are working out the logistics that will  make that happen as we speak.

Enjoy.