The Worst World Series (And Thats Saying Something)

Baseball is supposed to be a beautiful game. It is supposed to flow, to have that magnificently tense feel, despite the lack of nonstop action which rivals golf. It is the simplest game, yet the most complex.
The individuality of the pitchers wind-up, the blur of white that is a 90-mph fastball, the swing of the wooden bat, the crack of the ball on the sweet spot… Nothing quite like it; nothing at all.
Normally, the champions of the two leagues that make up the Major League, the National and American, play in the World Series. They’ve done it every year since 1903, with the exceptions of 1904, because it was not an established tradition and 1994 because of a players’ strike.
The World Series is supposed to be one of the most holy spectacles in all professional sports. The previous series lived up to that expectation. This year’s series did not. The biggest difference between this year, and the other 100 series, was that this year, nobody really won.
Yes, Cards fans, I can hear you yelling from here. I know, the St. Louis Cardinals did win the World Series in five games, but they really didn’t win, per se. They just played good-enough baseball and watched the Tigers choke on glory.
The Tigers played so terribly, St. Louis could have easily let their AA affiliates (the middle level of three minor league teams) the Springfield Cardinals play, and they probably still would have won.
Don’t get me wrong, I give credit where credit is due. The Cardinals did play well enough in the 162-game regular season to make the playoffs, and they easily defeated the Padres and Mets in the National League Playoffs, but when it came to the World Series all they did was avoid choking.
Or maybe the Tigers didn’t choke…Maybe they just froze in the terrible, cold and rainy weather Detroit offered. Whatever it was, the Tigers didn’t just play poorly, they played like amateurs (no offense, amateurs). Before I present evidence of how terribly the Tigers played, small and easily impressionable children may want to stop reading. In addition, those with heart conditions are advised to skip the next few paragraphs. There’s nothing dirty, but it is really sad.
The Tigers committed eight fielding errors in five games. That allowed eight unearned runs, the most allowed by a team in the World Series in 50 years. That’s not just bad—that is unexplainably awful.
The Tigers couldn’t get on base if their lives depended on it. As a team, they had a .199 batting average in the World Series—and they weren’t exactly stepping into the batters’ box against hall of fame pitchers. Instead, the Cardinals sent a bunch of young pitchers up to the mound, and still got the best of the Tigers.
Not even Placido Polanco, the Tigers slugger, who was batting.471 in the first two rounds of the playoffs; was able to hit a barn door with a banjo in the fall classic. The Tigers “slugger” hit a depressing 0-17, .000 against the young relatively inexperienced pitching staff of the Cards.
Polanco wasn’t alone in the category of key players letting their team down. Kenny Rodgers, Detroit’s pitching ace, also put his mark on the series. Rodgers embarrassed himself and his team—for that matter the sport, by winning a game. He pitched eight scoreless innings in game two, and at the same time disgraced the series. He embarrassed the series because of the “dirt smudge” found on his right hand.
Depending on who you ask, it wasn’t dirt at all. Allegedly, the substance was pine tar, a substance sometimes used legally by batters, and illegally by pitchers, to enhance grip.
Regardless of what it was, and I have my doubts about the “dirt defense.” The smudge of whatever-it-was also joined on the beating up of this series.
I won’t even talk about the terrible baserunning display the Tigers put on, except to say that it looked more like the “before” picture of a baseball fundamentals DVD than it did a Major League Baseball team.
But what can you do? Thankfully, we only have to wait until April before the new season. Hopefully the local Little League coach can teach the Tigers how to play by then.

Published for the November 22 issue of The Oarsman