Cubs Win It All!
I've had a lot of nostalgia all year, given that it's the 25th anniversary, of the 1991 World Series where my Minnesota Twins won a thrilling seven-game series when I was at a very formative age. I've watched most World Series since and there have been plenty of great ones, but given the two long-suffering franchises who were playing and that my adopted hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, is a big Chicago Cubs town, I have to say that this was my favorite series since 1991. I'd have been pleased with whichever team won, and a little bit sad for whichever team didn't win. Both teams carried themselves gracefully throughout the series, never given rise to the sort of villainy that sometimes makes an opposing team easy targets to dislike (i.e. the 1986 New York Mets and the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals, among others).
The excitement of the games and frequent reversals of momentum were also memorable, with the majority of these seven games being active, unpredictable, and tense. And it's so important that in those rare years when there is a Game 7 that it be a great game, and 2016 didn't disappoint. It looked the Cubs were gonna be up to their old tricks and piss away a comfortable lead, but instead it was the Indians up to their old tricks by letting a 3-1 World Series advantage slip away in the final three games of the postseason. Even the final play on a routine ground ball blooped a few yards into the infield was not without suspense.
I find myself increasingly annoyed with the babying of starting pitchers in baseball today, where a manager takes a guy pitching a shoutout out of the game in the fifth inning because he issued a two-out walk, so I can't quite get into baseball the way I did when I was a kid as it just seems so much more coldly mechanical now. Cubs Manager Joe Maddon got lucky that his team's offense delivered at key times because in terms of his decisions with pitching, he did pretty much everything he could think of to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It seems like fate intervened to the point that even crummy management decisions couldn't stop the Cubs this year. It was long overdue.
The excitement of the games and frequent reversals of momentum were also memorable, with the majority of these seven games being active, unpredictable, and tense. And it's so important that in those rare years when there is a Game 7 that it be a great game, and 2016 didn't disappoint. It looked the Cubs were gonna be up to their old tricks and piss away a comfortable lead, but instead it was the Indians up to their old tricks by letting a 3-1 World Series advantage slip away in the final three games of the postseason. Even the final play on a routine ground ball blooped a few yards into the infield was not without suspense.
I find myself increasingly annoyed with the babying of starting pitchers in baseball today, where a manager takes a guy pitching a shoutout out of the game in the fifth inning because he issued a two-out walk, so I can't quite get into baseball the way I did when I was a kid as it just seems so much more coldly mechanical now. Cubs Manager Joe Maddon got lucky that his team's offense delivered at key times because in terms of his decisions with pitching, he did pretty much everything he could think of to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It seems like fate intervened to the point that even crummy management decisions couldn't stop the Cubs this year. It was long overdue.
posted by Mark at 6:47 AM
1 Comments:
I was shocked when Chapman went back out for the 9th after giving up 3 runs in the 8th -- at that point I thought for sure the Cubs were done. Tactically I've never been a big fan of intentional walks and they came back to bite Cleveland in the 10th.
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