World Series 2011

The St. Louis Cardinal will be hosting the Texas Rangers in the World Series starting October 19th and at this point I just don't care. Yeah, Texas is big, bad and powerful and seems destined to get their championship after being sacrificed to the arms of the San Francisco Giants last year. The Cardinals will be going for their second World Series victory in five years while making their third appearance in seven. Why does the sports media always seem to count them out from getting into the playoffs? I thought it was a simple.

As horrible as it may seem the teams are reduced to this. A Texas team with this guy as their brightest star.

Josh Hamilton who is a born again Christian who was a party animal throwing away his extremely rare talents, skills and millionaire career with drugs and alcohol. (and questionable women it seems)

There's also a St. Louis team that thought hiring  Mark McGuire as the hitting coach was a smart step. This guy?

Pujols was psyched!

Anyway, I guess in the end I'm pulling for Ron Washington and his Rangers to steam roll the National League team.  Not only does Wash look like the grandfather I always wanted but he reminds me in some ways of gentlemen who inhabit the Tenderloin.

One last thing, who did the Cardinals get Jeff Reardon young again? This year's beard belongs to Jason Motte who grew out his whiskers and became the clone of one of the 80s best relievers.

Jason Motte

Jeff Reardon: The Eliminator

Maybe Brian Wilson has been paying tribute to Reardon as well. Though he's beard apparently has nothing but fastballs beneath it.

Brian Wilson

Go Rnagers!

2010 World Series

So my predictions weren't correct, in fact they were dead wrong but I am OK with that. So this year we will have the Texas Rangers facing off with the San Francisco Giants for the baseball championship.
Congratulations to both teams! The Rangers are going into their first World Series ever while the Giants are looking for their first championship since they moved from New York back in the 1950s, longer than the Texas franchise has existed.

The way I see it is this, the Giants can win if their pitching stays sharp continuing to be very hard to score off of. Their hits will come and will probably scrape out between two and four runs a game. the Rangers on the other hand will win if they score more than four runs; there will be no tight games of 9 to 8. Texas has the neutralizer of Cliff lee who should be capable of shutting down the Giants' bats but who knows; they aren't a team that relies on the long ball and every run they get is a miracle so that strategy may still work. Pat the Rangers' starters I recall their being some bullpen problems which could also come into play in the late innings.
So to reiterate, if Texas starts hitting dingers regularly, forget about it, the Rangers will clobber San Francisco but if the Giants maintain it will be very tough. Don't expect Cody Ross to continue his post season power surge and don't expect the Giants pitching to walk three batters intentionally; they're made of tougher stuff than the Yankees as they know they can't rely on a juiced up Cano Home Run, a moon shot by mouth breathing Texiera or a disingenuous round tripper from A-Fraud.
To me this doesn't seem like a Series with a foregone conclusion; it could be combination of Texas tee offs and San Francisco Torture.

Good Luck guys!