Ego vos elegi

Thoughts from a St. Louis seminarian

Thy Kingdom Come!

Not with a bang, but a whimper...

I haven't blogged anything since Albert Pujols' homerun, which probably makes me look like an embarrassed fan hiding my head in the sand after the Cardinals' loss in Game 6.  In fact, I've simply been too busy with increasing duties here, as well as family members in town for my parents' 25th anniversary. 

But I do have some thoughts on the now-concluded post-season.  Game 6 of the NLCS did indeed prove that, all my calculations notwithstanding, momentum is only as good as the next day's starting pitcher.  Roy Oswalt went out and did on Wednesday night just what he had done the previous week: make the Cardinals look like they couldn't hit.  Their heart-breaking loss on Monday night seemed to be in the past--thanks in part, I'm sure, to the day off in-between.  They came right back and finished the job, leaving us once again in awe of their pitching. 

There is little else for us to blame our loss on this time.  There was a bad call at second base that killed a potential rally in the fifth, but the fact is that if the heart of your lineup doesn't deliver when it needs to, you won't win.  Some have suggested that LaRussa should have allowed bench players like So Taguchi and John Rodriguez to show their stuff in place of injured veterans like Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker, both of whom did little throughout the NLCS.  But such judgments are too easy to make in hindsight. 

This lack of offense was the most disappointing thing.  With the exception of the Pujols' home run, this series gave St. Louis fans the same feeling last year's World Series sweep did.  To parody the famous poem:                                            

This is the way the season ends

This is the way the season ends

This is the way the season ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

An offense that had been explosive all season was deafeningly silent, and that's all there is to be said.  Nonetheless, the memory of Pujols' Game 5 home run will be around for a long time, and I am indeed grateful that the series ended, however disappointingly, at Busch Stadium for the last time.

It will sound like "sour grapes", and I wasn't smart enough to blog it before the event, but I did maintain, even before the Astros had eliminated the Cardinals, that the winner of the NLCS would simply win the chance to be sacrificial lambs for the Other Sox to end their own eighty-year-old curse.  I would have been excited to see Boston finally winning last year, had they not been beating up on my team in the process, and with another team aiming to right years of frustration, I was sort of glad not to be in the way.  At any rate, the Cardinals' failure to perform against Houston's starters made me wonder what would have happened against the ChiSox, who had FOUR different starters throw complete games in the ALCS!  Complete games are rare enough in the regular season: four of them in a playoff series is almost unthinkable.  Better to let the Astros have their shot at that rotation, and we'll wait for a year when there's no AL Team of Destiny to contend with!

The World Series was, I thought, very exciting, despite the fact that it was a sweep.   Last year's sweep, aside from the fact that the Cardinals lost, was simpmly not that interesting after the Belhorn home run that won the crazy Game 1.  This year, the sweep obscures the fact that every game was closely contested.  We saw Chicago trail Game 2, only to come back with a grand slam, then Houston tie it with Burke's slide at the plate, and finally Podsednik's home run to once again show that Brad Lidge is human.  Then there was Game 3, the longest WS game in the books, for which I stayed up into the 12th, only to doze off on the couch and miss the final home run.  And then a one-run Game 4, with highlights such as Juan Uribe tumbling into the stands for a foul ball.  As some have said, the only thing left is for the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series.  That would be truly apocalyptic--and while I really did root for the Cubs to go all the way two years ago, it would be a little galling to us in St. Louis if they did it before we do, after all the chances we've had. 

posted by: mhouser at 13:31 | link | comments |

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