A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Do not confuse Albert Pujols with LeBron James.
Albert wound up as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals for 11 years and helped lead his team to two World Championships, the most recent being just six weeks ago.
By comparison, Prince Fielder is likely walking away from the Milwaukee Brewers after the minimum six years.
I knew the whole Albert Pujols re-signing situation was doomed from the very start.
Once Pujols started to tell the press he was open to looking at other options besides the St. Louis Cardinals I knew, in the back of my head, that Pujols was going to go against the words he spoke not that long ago.
After an improbable and historic run starting in late-August (where one Vegas book had the team at 500-1 winning the pennant, 999-1 winning World Championship) the St. Louis Cardinals happy flight found the ultimate happy destination.
And crusty manager Tony LaRussa wisely decided to take the first exit ramp out of the airport.
Before this week is lost to LSU-Alabama hype, let’s pause to remember the weekend that was and reflect on some of the things that we learned:
Every 9 inning baseball game is a weird, fickle, mysterious entity all its own during which anything is possible. Over large sample sizes, certain aspects of baseball can be predictable and follow expected trends, but in the small sample size of 9 innings, especially when those innings come during playoff time, we often see things we don’t expect.
Did you expect to see Albert Pujols jack three home runs in a single game? He did.
Did you expect the signature pitching performance of the 2011 playoffs to come from the mustachioed Derek Holland? It did.
Did you expect a team to win by driving in the tying and winning runs on consecutive sacrifice flies? It happened.
So I present this World Series Game 5 preview to you with absolutely no certainty that anything I say (except for one thing at the end) will come true or even seem reasonable once the 54th out of the night is recorded.
Last night, the St. Louis Cardinals blew a 9th inning lead to the Texas Rangers, which evened the World Series at 1-1. In that fateful 9th, with runners on but no runs yet in, La Russa pulled closer Jason Motte from the game despite Motte’s ridiculous track record this postseason. It left La Russa open to criticism, and he isn’t the only one. Albert Pujols is also taking heat from the media for not hanging around afterwards to face the music for his 9th inning error.
But who cares about all that? I just stumbled upon (hat tip to Deadspin) a video of a decades-old appearance that Tony La Russa made on the game show “To Tell The Truth”. So quit second-guessing the tinkering, feline-loving La Russa and take a few moments to watch this video, shot way back in the days when La Russa was mixing up his mad baseball chemistry on the South Side.
Excitement for sports fans ran deep Thursday night as two thrilling events were unfolding at the same time.
The St. Louis Cardinals and LA Galaxy both took a 1-0 lead in their respective contests, but the teams went separate ways soon after their scores. The Cardinals lost their slim lead, and the game, 2-1 in the ninth and now have their series even at one game a piece. The Galaxy held on to their tight margin and made it a victory to advance to the quarterfinals in the CONCACAF Champions League.
In Episode 14 of the MLB Trivia Challenge Podcast sponsored by the M&A consultants and advisors at Generational Equity, Jerod and Ari welcome…no one. They handle this one themselves.
Jerod takes a stab at Ari’s most challenging slate of questions yet, and then they discuss what has made the 2011 MLB playoffs so memorable before previewing the World Series matchup between Texas and St. Louis.
On Thursday, the final episode of our yearlong MLB Trivia Challenge will be posted. Ari and I recorded the episode today, and since we spent a good deal of time talking about the World Series matchup between St. Louis and Texas, which begins tomorrow night (full schedule here), I am posting that portion of the podcast now so you can listen to it before the games actually begin.
It pains me not to be writing about the Milwaukee Brewers in this space, but I think I’ll recover faster from a 12-6 loss than I would had the Brewers lost on a Cardinals walk-off.
If I were to write a World Series preview from a Cardinals perspective, it would be full of bias and spite, so I’ll instead focus my efforts on my new (temporary) favorite team, the Texas Rangers, as I preview the 2011 World Series, which starts tomorrow night (TV schedule and pitching probables here).
If I only could bring such good luck to my White Sox.
Two years in a row I have attended Game 6 of the ALCS at The Ballpark in Arlington, and two years in a row I have witnessed the Rangers perform their Ginger Ale celebration in the infield after the game. Last year, it was a close win over the Yankees when Alex Rodriguez struck out. This year, it was an absolute blowout over the Tigers.
So now the Texas Rangers will go to the World Series for the second straight year, with their bats on fire and the bullpen in lockdown mode. Their opponent will the St. Louis Cardinals, who are one of the most improbable World Series contenders ever. The Cardinals were 10.5 games back of the Braves for the Wild Card with a few days left in August. Thanks to a 10-20 finish by the Braves, and their own September surge, the Cardinals stormed into the playoffs and haven’t stopped winning since.
There is still potentially a lot of baseball remaining in the National League Championship Series, and after three games obviously someone was going to have a two games to one lead. So it remains too early to panic and call the election.
I made that mistake back in 1982 when the St. Louis Cardinals won Game 3 of the World Series and had bolted to an early lead in Game 4. The Milwaukee Brewers came back to win that game and eventually had a 3-2 series lead before losing the Fall Classic in seven games.
But the first three games, as well as the National League Division Series before that, have provided some telling signs. After being a decent, but not a playoff-caliber team most the season, the Cardinals now seem to have that 2006 feel.
That World Championship feel.
To coin a phrase – could it possibly be Written In the Stars???
Right now I will give you several reasons I believe the Cards will be able to ultimately close the deal on Milwaukee.
It was another intriguing weekend in sports, especially here in The Midwest where baseball is currently king and a changing of the guard is underway in the Big Ten. Here are 8 things we learned this weekend.
Behold the power of cheese.
Things have been pretty good in Wisconsin in 2011. Outside of all that political crap, the sports scene has been unreal. From the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, to the Packers’ run through the playoffs and their Super Bowl XLV win, and even Marquette and Wisconsin making it to the Sweet Sixteen, it has been a dream season for everyone in America’s Dairyland.
And then there are the Brewers.
Until early Friday evening, there had been two sporting events that I had personally attended in my life which I put above all others. One was a tense game on an early fall afternoon on the final weekend of the strike-shortened 1981 baseball season, when the Milwaukee Brewers downed the Detroit Tigers to earn the franchise’s first ever playoff berth.
The other came nearly eight years ago when the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks went to sudden death overtime in the first round of the NFL playoffs. The game ended with Al Harris’s ‘Divine Interception’, with Harris crossing the end zone literally right in front of me.
The Milwaukee Brewers walk-off win against the Arizona Diamondbacks last night to move on to the National League Championship Series may have them both topped.
