Posted on 10/27/2004 11:08:29 AM PDT by Gucho
By Steve Keating ST LOUIS (Reuters) - Boston Red Sox fans awoke on Wednesday with their impossible dream on the brink of becoming a reality.
The Red Sox will step onto Busch Stadium field tonight under a lunar eclipse needing one more victory over the St Louis cardinals to clinch their first World Series title since 1918 and put to rest forever the "Curse of the Bambino."
Excellent!
That is a great little video!
I think he's wrong...
:-)
Actually I blame free agency and Angelos for O's failures. Back when I lived close enough to trek up to a game whenever I wanted, the O's had a farm system that rivaled the Twins and Montreal (er Washington). Then Angelos tries to compete with Steinbrenner and we have your "Owned" condition.
The Yankees have a simple plan. They look at what free agents do well against them during the season. Those are the ones they go after in the off-season. It kills 2 birds with one stone. 1) they now are doing good for you and 2) they aren't the ones that kill you anymore. Over time the Yankees have the team to beat.
Now look at the Red Sox. They are using the Yankee model. I heard one of the announcers the other night say that Trot Nixon was the only original Red Sox on the team.
I believe when Rochester starts kicking butt again, then Baltimore should be doing well in a couple of years after that. Until they become free agents... It will take a new owner, because the tobacco settlement money has run out, and Angelos hasn't got a clue how to build a team.
?
Theo was on the radio today saying that he's not going to sacrifice the interests of the team for any one individual, but that he'd love to have Pedro back on the team. The bottom line is that Pedro will get offered more money by Steinbrenner than he will by the Sox; it's going to be up to him what staying on the Sox is worth to him.
The fraternity house I lived in when I was a student in Boston/Cambridge is almost visible in that picture.
Pedro HATES Posada. He probably hates Sheffield, too. If Pedro wants to leave, he should go to the NL where he can be an 8-inning pitcher. He'd make a great addition to the Dodgers.
But, I think he'll stay and I think we'll try to keep Lowe. Lowe talked about what's different and he said Curt's pre-game planning regimine rubbed off on him this month. Lowe is young and completely healthy. It's his head. If Curt has fixed his head problems, we should try hard to sign him.
I love the Orioles. Shonda Schilling's family are Orioles fans and they forbid Curt to sign with the Yankees!
To have the Bronx Boyz FOREVER BE TIED (ignominiously) to the greatest post-season in living history.
Coming back from 0-3 (a record that can never be broken)
Burning thru 8 straight post season victories (a record that will be VERY hard to beat)
As near as I can tell watching a fair number of Cubs games on TV; the Cubbies are dubbed the Lovable Losers; it seems ingrained in their character more than the Red Sox; because the Red Sox have fielded so many competitive teams over the years and have won pennants in recent memory. I wouldn't disparage the quality of the Cubs teams, they've been competitive at times in a sort of above average way.
Then, there are the cases where the new kids on the block, the Diamondbacks and Marlins only waited a few years before winning their first World Series.
http://cubscurse.knup.net/
I wonder who the sports shows hosts were speaking about when they said on last nights radio show, that next years Red Sox team would look different than the current one. I wonder who's leaving?
Bet you lived on Bay State Road. Went to MIT?
I like the O's by virtue of coming into a few Orioles items, jackets, caps, etc.
At one point, in the early '80s, I beleive the Orioles were among the most winning sports franchises ever, of all time.
Since, maybe like the Raiders who were on that list as well; they have fallen on the list.
I think, this is all so.
I gotta hand it to the Cards - they've been pretty classy about this whole thing. They had a great run, up until the World Series - a great year, and they should be proud of their accomplishments during the regular and post-season...
But, Boston just wanted it more, I think, and played that way. The Cards didn't show everyone what they did during the rest of the season, but they have nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe we'll have a rematch next year ;0)
Comm. Ave. And yes, I graduated from the Institute.
My sophmore year, a bunch of us from the house were on the beach somewhere. We're all ripped; Hump is running around just about naked chasing his girlfriend, some of the guys are singing (poorly) drinking wine from a gallon jug, one is breaking small rocks by throwing them at a big one. We were a scruffy looking bunch. So here comes a nice young couple, and they ask what college we're from. Before anybody else answers, I give them a real hang-dog look and say, slowly, "We're from an institute". They take off fast, and the rest of the guys start falling all over themselves laughing.
I was born 20 miles from Fenway, but I've spent most of my adult life in the Chicago area. The two teams are similar in that (until this year) they hadn't won championships for a long time, and they have old and wonderful ballparks.
The difference between the Red Sox and the Cubs seems to be that the Cubs have had a lot of lousy teams thoughout the years, but have had very few close-but-no-cigar finishes. They did lose the NLCS in, I think, '83 to the Padres in awful fashion (a 5 game series, they won the first two and lost the last three), but other than that they've mostly just lost. Whereas the Red Sox have had numerous close-but ... finishes.
Another difference is that the Red Sox have the most storied rivalry in sports with the Yankees. The Cubs have a rivalry with St. Louis, but the history, and the fervor, is nothing like Boston/New York.
Finally, the other notable close-but ... finish that the Cubs had, with Arizona last year, points up one last difference, and that's the fans in the stands. Much was made of the fans who reached after the ball hit into the front row down the left field line in Wrigley, interfering with the fielder who may otherwise have caught it. Afterwards, people tried to excuse them, saying "it was just a natural reaction by a fan." But the week before, I was at Fenway watching the Oakland/Boston ALDS. A similar play happened behind third base. In this case, the Boston fans were climbing out of their seats to get away from the ball and the fielder. Having been at a few games at Wrigley, it seems to me that the fans there, as a whole, are much less concerned with the baseball game itself and lesss knowledgable than the Fenway fans. They're there more as tourists than as team supporters.
My daughter, who is at grad school in the Boston area and follows the Sox very closely, told me before the playoffs that it was pretty much a given that the Sox would not try to re-sign Lowe. I'll bet that's changed now, though. She says that to her, the first priority is to sign Varitek; he's the guy who keeps the carnival in the clubhouse from imploding (she's got a friend in Red Sox marketing that gets her tickets). After that, it would be Pedro. It was deemed that signing all 3 (Varitek, Pedro, and Lowe) would be very difficult (as our Japanese friends say).
But things may be different now. A lot of it depends on whether Pedro will take significantly less money to stay with the Sox than the Yankees (the standard rumor) will pay him. I don't think Steinbrenner will let Pedro keep a dwarf in the clubhouse, and that kind of thing may figure in.
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