By Sam Sheehan
Sports Columnist
There are many reasons that I love October. In one month, I have my birthday, Halloween, Columbus Daaa — I mean, Fall Weekend, Leif Erickson Day and Sports Month. No disrespect to Leif Erickson Day (it got really commercialized when SpongeBob SquarePants got a hold of it, anyway), but Sports Month is definitely the most important part.
October is the one time when all of the four major sports are going on. For the hockey and basketball seasons, it's the exciting beginning of a new year. For football, it's the pivotal time when pretenders are separated from contenders. For baseball, October means one thing: playoffs.
I have to say that when the playoffs first shaped up in the beginning of October, I couldn't have been less excited about them. In my mind, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Phillies would either play the Rays or the Yankees in a rematch of one of the previous two World Series.
Yawn.
I guess it would have been cool for Roy Halladay to get a ring and, yeah, the Rays finally winning it might have been OK. But I'm a Red Sox fan. I watch American League East teams all the time. And the Yankees are concentrated evil. That wouldn't have been much fun for me.
But lo and behold, it was the Texas Rangers on the backs of Cliff Lee and Josh Hamilton who emerged on top of the AL, putting down our divisional rivals in the process. By the same token, the San Francisco Giants pulled an upset of their own on the National League side, jumping on the tough Phillies pitching and silencing their bats.
It was a World Series I didn't see coming, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. One the one side, you had the tortured Giants who hadn't won a title since 1954, when they were still in New York. The team had last made the World Series in 2002, only to lose a heartbreaking game seven to the Angels. On the other side, you had the Rangers, who had never even won a postseason series before this year, let alone make it to baseball's big dance. Either way, it was going to be a good story, so I decided to look at this Giants' World Series win as a learning experience.
This is what this World Series has taught me.
Pitching and defense actually win championships.
The Giants had Buster Posey and Cody Ross batting third and fourth in their lineup for game five of the World Series. The Rangers had Josh Hamilton and Vladimir Guerrero in those same positions. There was no doubt who had the offensive firepower in this matchup — coming into the World Series, the Rangers were averaging about five runs per game to the Giants' three.
Not exactly a difference to sneeze at. Maybe that was why it was so impressive to see the Giants' pitching staff combine to hold the Rangers to 2.22 runs per game for the series. In games two through five, the Rangers only managed to generate 1.25 runs per game against that smothering Giants pitching. Speaking of that Giants pitching…
Tim Lincecum was good …
I mentioned The Freak in a column before this, predicting that the National League Championship Series pitching matchup between him and the aforementioned Halladay in game one would be a great one.
I was wrong.
It was a good game, but it wasn't the pitching duel we expected — the two starters gave up seven runs. It was one of Lincecum's uglier outings on the postseason.
But he still won the game. That was the pattern for The Freak, who was matched against fellow aces in Halladay and Texas' Lee. He operated by putting together unrattled, composed outings where he got strikeouts and gave his team chances to conquer the opposing pitchers. He looked like a seasoned vet all the while, putting up an impressive 4-1 record with a 2.43 ERA, 37 innings pitched and 43 K's for the Giants in the postseason. He had to be the best Giants pitcher, right?
… but Matt Cain was better …
He wasn't. Matt Cain's ERA for the postseason? Zero. No earned runs.
Indeed, aside from the unearned run that the Braves nabbed off of him, no man crossed the plate while Cain was on the mound. While his inning workload was nearly half of Lincecum's (21.1 innings pitched for Cain), you can't argue with a guy not giving up an earned run all postseason. That's why either Matt Cain or Tim Lincecum won the World Series most valuable player, right?
… and Edgar Renteria wins World Series MVP.
Edgar Renteria? Really? I get it. He hit a bomb off of Cliff Lee. BUT COME ON! Just because he's about 76 years old and America can't remember any game that isn't a clincher is no reason to do this. Yes, his batting average in the series was high, but what about Cody Ross and his homers or Buster Posey and his timely hitting? OR ANY OF THE GIANTS PITCHERS!? Any of them minus Sanchez. I thought Edgar Renteria was dead and was being pulled around the field on puppet strings before I saw him blink. I'm convinced the votes were tampered with just to give me something to get upset about in this series.
Eleven-year-old Buster Posey convinced MLB that he is 23.
I can't prove Buster Posey forged a birth certificate so he could play professional baseball. I can't even confirm rumors that he spent his signing bonus on Yomega yo-yos, 57 years of Xbox Live and "get out of bedtime free" coupons. I can, however, release unconfirmed reports that he has previously gone to the 15-day DL with his condition listed as "cooties." He's going to have to stop hanging out with girls if he wants to stay healthy next year.
Since Texas lost, the Yankees will probably get Cliff Lee this offseason.
(Expletive deleted.)
Sam Sheehan '12 refuses to write any more clever taglines until you talk sports with him at
sam_sheehan (at) brown.edu.
