for the cards to win the world series this year. 83 wins, poor postseason, one of the worst cards playoff teams much less one of the worst world series champs. nice vette eckstein, hope you get lost in it next year. does this mean we win next year according to the pattern? disclaimer: (don't take the title to seriously, its more of a figure of speech in this instance)
10 years from now...in the history books... the yankees will be known as the 2006 world champs! If you can't buy the title, you can buy the history books that report who won the title !!!! yea!!!!!!!!!!!!
i've already voted them the worst world series champions in history. facts won't change my mind either, not that you can prove it otherwise. look at the national league pieces of crap that they had to go through and then a detoit team that absolutely layed down. ah, #$%# it, at least viz got a ring out of the deal.
Yeah I am almost glad the Cards won. It won't stop the BoSox N Yanks loving Eastern Sports Network from talking about how vastly superior the AL is. But at least now we have a counter argument. Clearly the Tigers season was a success the moment they set foot in the playoffs, a lot of these Cards had been there before. It makes a difference.
Act of God...and a small sample size. Brightside, the best team is the team with the best 162-game record.
TINY LITTLE ECKSTEIN ACTUALLY BIG AND GRITTY Small Eck Comes Up Big Vs. Tigers Diminutive Star Big at Heart by Ken Tremendous Picture it: Joel Zumaya, the Detroit Tigers’ flamethrowing righty, stands on the mound. He is capable of throwing a baseball 120 miles per hour with wicked movement. Sixty feet away, gritty and determined David Eckstein, all 5-foot, 7-inches and 165 pounds of him, stands at the plate. Or, rather, he buzzes around the plate, like a gnat around a pitcher’s head. “He’s the grittiest player I have ever seen,” says Everyone. “You think he’s too small, you think his arm is too weak, you think he is not that good at baseball, you think he is a small, small boy who is very small, you think he can’t hurt you. And you are right. But god damn, is that small boy gritty and determined.” And gritty. In college – the same age at which Angels’ first baseman Darin Erstad was busy being a hard-nosed punter -- David Eckstein was told that he was just too small. So instead of riding the roller coaster at the amusement park where someone told him that, he tried out for the baseball team. The 5-foot 5-inch 128 pound Eckstein quickly demonstrated that he belonged. Also, he is tough. The 5-foot 1-inch, 102 pound Eckstein – this year alone – has broken three fingers, shattered an elbow, slammed his other fingers in a door, dislocated his shoulder, had his eyes gouged when one of the older boys took his lunchbox, stuck a knife into his side on a dare, broke his own neck intentionally, ate his own ankle, and allowed teammate Jeff Suppan to open the top of his head with a corkscrew. That’s a lot of abuse for one 4-foot 2-inch frame to take. But did he miss even one game in 2006? Yes. He missed 39, actually. But holy ****, is he tough. And did these injuries affect his performance? I don’t think so, friend. He hit like .350 and always came up clutch every single time and tore it up all through the playoffs and basically out-hustled everyone to the tune of 50 doubles and like a thousand runs. I haven’t checked to make sure that stuff is true, but I don’t need to. Because even if Eck didn’t do any of that, he at least was always gritty, which is what counts more than anything in baseball. Also there are home runs. “The thing that makes David Eckstein so great,” says a person with a computer, “is nothing. His offense is worth 9 more runs over the course of the entire season than the average AAA call-up. So. That’s…something, I guess.” Something indeed. Something gritty, determined, and detertty – a word I just made up that means determined/gritty. So when David Eckstein -- 2-foot-1 in bare feet, topping the scales at barely 40 pounds soaking wet, and appearing in the game only thanks to an MLB Outreach Program to give malnourished young mole people a chance to fulfill a dream of playing in the big leagues – stands in against 8-foot-11 Joel Zumaya, who can throw a weighted leather exercise ball 200 MPH with his penis, you might think Zumaya has the advantage. But he didn’t count on the heart, or the determinittyness, or the sheer heartitude, or the gnatosity, or the dirtheart, or the toughgrit, or the dirtdirtdirt, of an 11-inch tall, 2-pound foetus named Dirtid Gritstein. Eckstein hit a soft liner to left that Craig Monroe kind of misplayed on a wet track, and it fell in for a double. So, yeah, he’s kind of the best ever. <i>Ken Tremendous is about six feet tall, relatively big at heart, and mildly gritty.</i> Link
If you're a Rocket fan, you can't make this argument. Two words: 6th seed. Who cares who had the best record in the regular season in the NBA in 1995? The story of the season was the Rockets because of what they were able to accomplish in the playoffs. Baseball doesn't let in every team in the playoffs. It doesn't let half the league play in its postseason. To get to the playoffs you have to be a very good team. There are 30 teams and 4 from each league make the playoffs. And in any given game, more than any other sport, any team can beat another team. So once you get to the playoffs, anything goes. Remember...before the Wild Card, we had the Giants winning 102 games...and MISSING the playoffs.
The NBA playoffs is more difficult than the MLB playoffs. While you believe that baseball having less teams in the playoffs somehow makes it more difficult for less than impressive teams to win, I would argue that it still gives the teams with lesser records a much greater chance to get on a hot streak and ride it to the World Series. A team in the 8th spot has to go through more teams to make it, and they don't get a five game series. Anyway, the Rockets were the best team in 1995, they had been injured for a good part of that season. I mean, come on, they were the defending champions. A different team has won the world series since 2000. Last year's NL and AL teams didnt even make the playoffs.
the 95 regular season rockets were no where near the best team in the league...that's why they made the trade for drexler in february. how is it more difficult? sounds to me like it's easier. if anyone can beat anyone on any given night, that makes it tougher on the teams that are "supposed" to win...the ones with expectations. but, hey...i'm probably the freak here, because i see the NBA schedule and playoff system as ridiculously flawed. but that's just me. any system that lets in more teams than it sends home is silly to me. either cut the number of teams you let in the playoffs or cut the number of regular season games to put some sort of premium on those regular season games.
