I interrupt your regularly scheduled blog for a special announcement: The Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants are going to World Series!
Given that these are both Wildcard teams that fought their way through a do-or-die Wildcard game, a League Division Series and a League Championship series, it’s kind of double-plus cool!
[Those looking for more of the previous two posts, can read this older post about the Mike Judge movie, Idiocracy. Be assured I will resume the topic anon.]
Wow! Kansas City Royals — the wildcard team — take the Los Angeles Angels (the best team in baseball this year) three-zip in the ALDS. And that after an amazing wildcard game against the Oakland Athletics. The game last night — their fourth post-season game — was the first to go only nine innings and featured their biggest win so far: 8-3!
It’s hard to separate my rooting for them to win from how objectively great all four games have been, but I think anyone would agree these were great games. The Royals have been so much fun to watch. Their running game alone is a joy to behold.
Blue beat green in one and red in three; now they go after orange best of seven!
World Series bound?
Yesterday featured, not one, not two, not three, but four MLB baseball games to watch. Normally there is nothing unusual about four baseball games in a day. During the regular season, when all 30 MLB teams play (which happens most days), there are 15 games on the day. The big difference yesterday was that these were post-season playoff games, and all four were televised in national markets at times that almost didn’t overlap.
And how about them Royals?! First they give the Tigers fits during the season after fighting their way above the pack — even taking first place in the Division for 30 days late in the season. Then they make it to the playoffs as a wildcard and have played amazing baseball in the three games so far. Quite a story; I hope they go all the way!
Plus, I’ve realized what really annoys me about NCIS: Los Angeles.
The regular season of MLB baseball ended yesterday. As it turns out, no one has to play a game 163. As recently as Saturday it looked like there could be up to three game 163s, but the final games played Sunday settled matters. On the personal plus side, the Pittsburgh Pirates and — perhaps more significantly — the Kansas City Royals are going to the playoffs. On the flip side, both teams are getting in as wildcard teams, so the journey may be short (but it would be pretty cool if the Royals went all the way).
And your Minnesota Twins, once again, aren’t going. It was another losing year for the Twins — fourth in a row — but they did manage to do a little bit better than they have in the last three. As I wrote earlier in the season, this year’s team showed some potential not seen those last three years. Unfortunately, in the end (as usual) our pitching brought us down. But at least we ended the season on a fairly nice note.
Post-season baseball begins this week and ends with the “Fall Classic” — the World Series.
And so it begins (again)…
Here we go, another MLB playoff season! (click to embiginate)
October is here, bringing with it shorter days, autumn leaves and bulk candy sales.
And the Major League Baseball Playoffs leading up to the World Series!
Well, it wasn’t unexpected, but the (Damn) Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles today in the fifth game of their ALDS series. And yesterday the Detroit Tigers beat the Oakland Athletics in their fifth game. The Division Series is best of five games, so now the Yankees (can we just assume there’s always a “Damn” in front of that name?) and the Tigers move into the next round, the ALCS.
Yesterday the San Francisco Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds in the fifth game of their NLDS series. This has all made for some exciting playoff baseball. It’s painful to see a team lose 1-2-3 (such as, say, a certain Minnesota team did to a certain New York [cough, spit] team in 2010). It’s much more exciting to see the series go to 2-2. That way you get the maximum number of games, and that fifth game breaks the tie and wins the series. And that fifth game is very intense.
But wait! Astute readers may be thinking, aren’t there four Division Series games? I count only three. Indeed you do, but did you notice the title of today’s post?
The Washington Nationals are playing the St. Louis Cardinals as I write this!
It’s been another very disappointing season for the Minnesota Twins and their fans.
They managed to do better than last year, but that’s not saying much. Depending on how you look at it, 2011 was the third (or second or fifth) worst season in franchise history (which began in 1961). The equivocation comes from whether you look at the win percentage, games lost or games won.
This season is the sixth (or fourth or seventh) worst season in the 52-year history of the Minnesota Twins. It’s also only the second time they’ve such a bad win percentage two years running (and many don’t expect next year to be stellar, either).
I’ll explain about this and more, but regardless of how you look at it, it was an awful year!
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