Dean's World

Winning ugly? Try "not winning at all"! It fits better, and the final call was obviously, painfully blown.

But not to worry. The Sox now get to travel to the West Coast, where the Sox have been miserably, horribly bad for years, 2005 included.

10.13.2005 12:07pm

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Scott Kirwin (mail) (www):

I'm not a Sox fan per se, but they are a respectable team with a long and colorful history in the game. Were the Angels robbed? Perhaps - but teams get robbed all the time and usually in more dramatic ways.

Of course as far as drama goes, it's completely in character for the Sox.

And as a Cardinals fan, I'm looking forward to an I-55 series.

10.13.2005 1:47pm

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Scott Kirwin (mail) (www):

And as a Cardinals fan, I'm looking forward to an I-55 series.

Which the media on both coasts will conveniently ignore, as they consistently have done to all all-Midwestern series.

10.13.2005 2:24pm

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IB Bill (mail) (www):

All-Midwestern Series?

You mean 87: Twins-Cardinals
85: Royals-Cardinals
44: Browns-Cardinals

Haven't been a lot of all MW series.

10.13.2005 3:33pm

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Scott Kirwin (mail) (www):

Yep those are the ones I was thinking about, esp. the ones in the 80s.

I said I was a Cardinals fan, didn't I?

;)

10.13.2005 5:16pm

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Dean Esmay:

Baseball has a long tradition of this sort of thing, which is why stealing bases is considered perfectly honorable. This is especially true in Chicago, where Bill Veck once put a midget in his batting lineup. Why? Because almost no pitcher could hit the guy's strike zone it was so small, so he automatically was walked every time he got up to bat. A perfect 1,000 batting average, best in baseball history! They had to change the rules to specify a minimum height requirement in the game because of that. No lie.

The rules are the rules--if the umpire doesn't call a strike, it ain't a strike. The batter spotted the ball rolling on the ground and the umpire didn't call a strike so he assumed a dropped ball and a legitimate run opportunity. The officials called it in his favor.

It ain't pretty but it's legit. Hey there were people in Florida who said they meant to vote for Gore but were confused. Yeah? Well too bad, we don't count votes based on what you say you meant to do....

10.13.2005 7:41pm