Dean's World

I taped the whole thing baby! Juan Uribe was on fire. WooHoo!

I can't wait to get home and watch it for real. Thanks baby. :-)

Congrats Dean.

Juan Uribe, the guy who made the two outstanding defensive plays to end the ballgame, used to be the Colorado Rockies shortstop. I liked him a lot, but I guess the Rockies management knew a bum when they saw one. ;-)

Dean sez: "An 8-game streak and they take the world series! Who does that???"

The Cincinnati Reds did exactly that in 1976, when they swept the Pirates, then the Yankees.

While reading up on this tonight, I find some comparisons to the White Sox and the 1990 Reds, who went the entire season in first place ("wire-to-wire" was the slogan), and who were never behind during the playoffs.

I might also note that while the 1990 Reds didn't sweep their National League opponents (the ever-present Pirates, again {g}), they mangled the "legendary" Oakland A's, who were predicted to win by, well... everyone. No one believed that the Reds could beat the Oakland juggernaught.

In fact, I distinctly remember that one MSM baseball commentator actually said "the A's have won the series! Excuse me, I meant the Reds have won the series," after the final game.

Heh.

I'm happy for the White Sox, and I take my hat off to them. They very much won this, as opposed to their opponents losing.

And I might add that the above-mentioned '76 series was won by the final incarnation of the Big Red Machine, probably the last truly great teams of baseball; so I figure that puts the Sox in some damn good company.

Enjoy the trophy, fellas. Good on ya...

Woooo-hoooo!!!! YAYYYYYYYY FOR DEAN!!!! HAIL TO THE KING!!!! And HAIL TO THE QUEEN....!!!!

It may have been a sweep, but damn the Astros didn't make it easy. And they still took the pennant for the first time in team history, so good for them.

Hasn't been a day like this in Chicago since 60 years ago. The occasion was VE Day (Victory in Europe Day), May 8, 1945. Just about everybody in Chicago who owned a gun, had access to a stolen one, or whatever, was outside in the streets shooting into the sky. (Like a bunch of Arabs celebrating a wedding or political demonstration. Maybe there's something universal about the way we handle guns.)

Anyway, there were casualties in our great city that day. Elsewhere in the country too, because this probably happened all across the USA. Everybody forgets that rounds fired up into the air come down somewhere.

In fact, I remember specifically reading in a Chicago newspaper one day in the 1950s that a baseball fan in Wrigley field, out there for a fun-filled day in the sun, took a .45 caliber slug that fell out of the sky, pierced his skull, and killed him dead. I doubt that fellow even knew what hit him. Talk about the finger of fate! (My thought at the time was that it might have missed him if he had stood up just in time for a 7th inning stretch, regardless of which inning it was.)

Amyway, regardless of anything and all that I have written on the topic, the Chicago W-Sox won the 2005 baseball World Series fair and square, playing heads-up ballgames not only all season long but straight through the playoffs and certainly the series.

So okay, Cubs fans. When are the northsiders going to expunge their dismal record of no World Series wins since 1908? That's 97 years if my arithmetic is correct. Let's get out there and hustle up some worthwhile baseball, like in the days of old.

C'mon. Surprise the shit out of me once again.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Dean sez:

"An 8-game streak and they take the world series! Who does that???"

The Cincinnati Reds did exactly that in 1976, when they swept the Pirates, then the Yankees.

Well, not exactly that, at least not in the post-season. They won seven straight, which was the most post-season games any team could have won back then, when there was no division series and the league championship series was best of 5.