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Th’ End
Everything you needed to know about the 2006 World Series can be summarized by the appearance of Billy Ray Cyrus—he of the achy-breaky heart and weaky-creaky career—to sing the national anthem before game five. Like BRC, the World Series had one defining highlight (the somewhat-close-to-exciting game four). Like BRC, it featured mullets aplenty—and yes, I realize that “mullet” became a comedic/acerbic trope back in 1998 or so. Like BRC, it was about as diverting as a speed bump.
So that’s that. The 2006 Major League Baseball season, and with it this year’s edition of the Seventh-Inning Scratch, has left the building. Happily, I can go back to passing my evenings in a laudanum haze, my blinds drawn, my air conditioner’s steady hum the only thing reminding me that I’m still alive. I’d thank y’all for reading over the last seven or so months, but most everybody probably bailed right around the time football season kicked in. Those of you still here, feel free to send greetings, questions, hurtful characterizations of my maternal forbears, and/or can’t-miss investment opportunities to Dobrow (at) Maxim.com during the off-season. And turn out the lights when you leave, will you?
Cardinals 4, Tigers 2 (Cards win series, 4-1): Every World Series wrap-up has started with some variation of the following paragraph, so far be it from me to veer from the script: “Congratulations to the Cardinals and their great fans, who wear lots of red clothing and enthusiastically bleat at the right moments. They were the best team in three consecutive October series, even if they only won 83 regular-season games and barely took advantage of the triple-wide berth given them by their just slightly more inept opponents. Holy fucking lord, how can this happen? Why, God, why?”…While I’m piling on, here’s another comment that places this ghastly World Series in context: It was basically decided by the inability of Detroit’s pitchers to field at a second-grade level…The weather sucked, Pu-Hole didn’t show up, the strike zone varied from pitch to pitch (“whimsical” seems an apt description for it), the Tigers swung at everything and ran the bases as if whacked on PCP, Fox carpet-bombed us with crowd shots (222 in game four alone, according to The New York Times)—just a pitiful effort all around, really…On the other hand, the 2005 Cards weren’t a whole hell of a lot worse than the 2000 Yankees, whose dynastic warblings obscured the fact that they went something like 3-49 in September and only advanced by dint of Jetertudinousness…What did Marcus Thames do between the Yankee massacre and the World Series to piss Jim Leyland off? Question the follicular sovereignty of his mustache? It makes zero sense that Thames and his .882 regular-season OPS received precisely one at-bat during the series…Please, get Chris Duncan out of the outfield, for his own protection…Not only wasn’t cute li’l Davey Eckstein not the real MVP, he didn’t rank among the top three candidates (starters Jeff Weaver and Chris Carpenter and resurrected slugger Scott Rolen both did more; you could probably make a case for Adam Wainwright as well). Eckstein’s game-four doubles both should have been caught and his game-five singles would have been identified as errors if the official scorer hadn’t been on the take…Okay, enough.
THE LIST: FIVE PREE DICK SHUNS FOR THE OFF-SEASON |
1. The Yankees will not trade Alex Rodriguez, because they’re not stupid. The Orioles will trade Miguel Tejada, because they are.
2. If Barry Bonds plays at all, it’ll be for his old pal and media-appointed Greatest Guy in the Universe Jim Leyland in Detroit.
3. Given the number of teams that have dollars to throw around, free agency will make lots of player agents very happy (and when agents are happy, so are Misters Armani, Vuitton, Zegna, and Lamborghini). Barry Zito will sign with the Metsies, Alfonso Soriano with the Orioles, Carlos Lee with the Angels, and Jason Schmidt with the Mariners.
4. The Yankees, who just can’t help themselves, will spend 72 zillion yen to import that Daisuke Matsuzaka guy from Japan. Seeing how well his “fat toad” characterization of Hideki Irabu went over, George Steinbrenner will waste no time dubbing Matsuzaka a “buxom lemur.”
5. With a new labor agreement in place and the steroid/HGH/andro/creatine/pop rocks thing on the backburner, there won’t be much big-picture nooz. I think one of the League Championship Series TV packages still lacks a broadcast outlet. Anybody wanna go halfsies with me on it?
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World Series, Game 4: Nickels and Quarters
Everything that hadn’t happened in the World Series so far happened during game four. Jeff Suppan remembered that he wasn’t Greg Maddux. Ivan Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson actually
| IDIOT TV GIMMICKS AIMED AT KIDS AND RETARDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS! |
“A sweeping curveball SWEEPS right over home plate!”
–Scooter the cartoon baseball, making his/her/its long-awaited return to Fox’s baseball telecasts at an hour when most children have long since been wrapped into their jammies.
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made contact with pitched balls. Not one but two bases were pilfered. Oh yeah—and we actually experienced bona fide drama, even if much of it was precipitated by the slippy-slide conditions of the St. Louis outfield.
And so, assuming the weather cooperates, we head into baseball’s final weekend with the Cardinals set to become the most unlikely world champion since…I dunno. John Ruiz? Seabiscuit? It’s pretty simple, really: the Cardinals aren’t making mistakes and the Tigers are. Fates of civilized nations have hinged on far less.
Cardinals 5, Tigers 4 (Cards lead 3-1): Before the game, footage was shown of Davey Eckstein soberly noting, “You can’t script October.” So inevitably, Eckstein goes out and enjoys a night straight out of some hack screenwriter’s ThinkPad: three doubles and the game-winning hit…Craig Monroe just now reacted to the decently struck ball that became the aforementioned game-winner…In one of its delightfully sponsored early-game segments, Fox suggested that the Cardinals must “continue to force mistakes.” What, should they blitz?…Come on, admit it: you giggled when the broadcasters attributed Fernando Rodney’s throwing error in part to “wet balls”…The TV folks responded to our call for a more racially and ethnically evenhanded mix in the all-too-frequent crowd shots. Last night, I spotted
| ON DECK |
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Tigers @ Cardinals (8:27 p.m. ET, give or take a few Justice promos): Me, I’d give Anthony Reyes the nod over Jeff Weaver and his high-wire act in and around the strike zone, especially given that the Tigers have returned to their swing-early-and-often ways. It probably doesn’t matter either way; the Cardinals have that team-of-Jesus glow about them right now.
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not just two black people, but an Asian guy—with his son on his lap, no less. Oh beautiful, for spacious skies… Speaking of Rodney, learning that he has an ungodly changeup to go with his 97-MPH heater is like learning, upon deplaning in Barcelona, that your girlfriend can speak Spanish…Based on last night’s at-bats, an alien who’d arrived on earth and stationed itself in the Busch Stadium bleachers would believe that Sean Casey is a viable offensive option and Albert Pu-Hole can be baited with off-speed stuff outside the strike zone. I’ve said it once and I’ll keep on saying it: dagnabit, kids, you can’t draw conclusions from small sample sizes.
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World Series, Game 3: A Smattering of Chatter
‘Twas fitting that on United Nations Day, a “holiday” celebrating an institution devoted to willy-nilly, unenforceable compromise, the baseball equivalents of Latvia (commish Bud Selig) and Estonia (labor lord Donald Fehr) came together to announce a new labor agreement. The new deal is basically the old deal, with a few dates shifted around. The provisions for tsk-tsking users of performance-enhancing substances remain unchanged—though to be fair, the union has been flexible about revising that aspect of the agreement mid-deal.
| BROADCASTERS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS! |
“Welcome to the new Busch Stadium, where everyone is a designated hitter.”
–Jeanne Zelasko, shattering Terry Bradshaw’s record for verbal incontinence within the first 20 seconds of a sports broadcast
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Alas, Cards starter Chris Carpenter wasn’t buying into the spirit of compromise, bulldogging his way through eight shutout, walk-free innings. The Tigers look twitchy at the plate and spastic in the field (five errors through three games), and Mount Pu-Hole hasn’t yet exploded. Those poor kitty-cats: Can you imagine the level of desperation that would prompt an individual to say, “We really, really want to get back to Detroit” (for potential games six and seven)? Light a candle—or, if you’re a Michigan denizen, a car—for the newly anointed underdogs.
(Sorry about the late posting. Our web tool thingie can be a real poopyhead sometimes.)
Cardinals 5, Tigers 0 (Cards lead 2-1): Carpenter had it goin’ on, girlfriend—his curveball left Detroit weak-kneed and disoriented in its wake, as if they’d just witnessed an episode of Grey’s Anatomy—but the Tigers sure helped him along, notably in the gone-in-four-pitches second inning…The inconsistently defined, gelatinous strike zone reared its ugly head once anew, this time with home-plate ump Wally Bell
| ON DECK |
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Tigers @ Cardinals (8:32-ish p.m. ET): The weather radar shows a splotch that’s greener than Al Gore (hoy-o!) settling in over St. Louis. Seriously, the next game of the series might be played in mid-November.
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requiring Joel Zumaya to throw the ball through an aperture the size of a mouse anus…No dingers in this one, which wouldn’t be notable but for Taco Bell promising everybody—fans in attendance, fans watching at home, fans of the opera—a free taco today if a player hit a moon shot to left field. That’s a huge win for the company: Not only don’t they have to ante up the kangaroo meat, dirt lettuce, and tortillas of hate, but they also get idjits like me to give them free advertising by mentioning the promotion. I like Taco Bell, though; I honestly believe that their chicken soft tacos boast the post-hangover restorative power of a thousand Tylenols…And Juan Encarnacion was asked to take a seat, and it was good…Since Fox dotes on its crowd shots, it’s fair for me to ask: Was there a single black person in attendance last night?…I guess it wasn’t enough for Alex Rodriguez to crush the spirits of Yankee fans with his miserable 30-HR, 120-RBI season. Now, through his particular brand of un-clutchiness, he’s cursed every individual with the Rodriguez surname. Detroit’s Pudge hasn’t made solid contact since the Divisional Series, while the Cards’ John is so nailed to the bench that they’d have to pry him off with a crowbar.
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World Series Games 1 and 2: Down With Pancakes
Here’s what we’ve learned from the first two nights of the World Series—the “series” of the “world,” if you will. First, as game one suggested, the Tigers remain eminently capable of lapsing into their circa-September hackiness at any given moment. Second, Fox oughta test-drive its radar gun, which alternately had Justin Verlander at 61 and 149 MPH on Saturday night. Third and finally, the Cards must be kinda psyched to wake up this morning in a best-of-five series with ace Chris Carpenter scheduled for two starts. This could prove interesting yet.
| BROADCASTERS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS! |
“Kenny Rogers is on quite a ride and, let me tell you something, I want to ride shotgun…He’s said to the entire city of Detroit, ‘Hop on my back and I’m going to lead you guys to a world championship!’”
–Eric Byrnes, stuck in a moment he can’t get out of
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Game One: Cardinals 7, Tigers 2 (Cards lead 1-0): A helpful hint for Jim Leyland: If ever a situation comes up where you have to ask yourself, “Hmm, should I walk Albert Pu-Hole here?,” just walk the guy. This is one of the rare strategic instances where “better safe than sorry” transcends cliché…Separately, if Leyland doesn’t move his best hitter, Carlos Guillen, up in the batting order, I am going to track him down and punch him in the uterus…Methinks Scott Rolen is healthy again. And methinks anybody who uses the word “methinks” should be forced to spend the remainder of his mortal days at a Renaissance Fair…I’m trying to think of a more wasteful use of the designated-hitter slot than Sean Casey. A houseplant? A fire hydrant? The mind boggles…I shoulda listed Anthony Reyes and his Changeup of Death higher up in this blurb. He did a sly job in this one, but I’d caution reading too much into a single sublime performance by an otherwise maddeningly inconsistent pitcher. In game five, he’s likely to become the most recent human embodiment of the phrase “regression to the mean.”
Game Two: Tigers 3, Cardinals 1 (series tied 1-1): The issue of whether or not Kenny Rogers might have been cheating came up when the Fox cameras compared pix of his pitching hand during the first inning (when it was slathered with some kind of brownish/yellowish goo) and the second (when it
| EXTRA BONUS DARNDEST BROADCASTERS! |
“When you pitch well in the postseason on Fox, you get your own video.”
–Joe Buck, actually sounding a touch disgusted, as a compilation of Anthony Reyes clips played to the tune of Madonna’s “Ray of Light.” “Rey”-es, “Ray” of light…get it?
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wasn’t). My best guesses as to the mystery substance: tree sap, bull semen, or runoff from a pregame eggplant parmigiana. Still, he pitched seven additional shutout innings after cleanin’ up. Nice attention to detail by Fox and a poor call by La Russa for not asking the umps to investigate…I’m convinced that Leyland is attempting to keep this series competitive so as not to show up La Russa, his bestest buddy in the whole wide world. In the ninth inning, he went to Todd Jones—who, on his best day, might be the fourth-best reliever in the Detroit pen. Predictably, Jones allowed a few hits, put another runner on by kicking an easy grounder, and plunked a batter. Leyland’s buddy ol’ pal La Russa bailed him out, though, by not pinch-hitting for NLCS superhero/regular-season lawn gnome Yadier Molina…Ivan Rodriguez hasn’t made solid contact in two weeks, not since the A’s and Cards got the “uh, maybe you oughta pitch him inside” memo first distributed in 2004…Brandon Inge may be a Gold-Glove-caliber third baseman—not that Gold Gloves mean anything in the wake of Derek Jeter receiving a pair—but he’s looked stiff in the field so far. He blew a play or two on Saturday night, then “overdived” (according to Tim “Timmy Syntax” McCarver) for a ground ball in this one.
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