El Hombre: 2011 World Series Open Thread
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on October 27, 2011 – 10:16 AM42 Comments
I realized yesterday that I’d completely forgotten to set up a WS entry — and regretted that even more while watching Pujols collect a record 14 total bases. I mean, not that I enjoyed watching the Texas pitching staff get a can of that size opened on them, but at the same time, sometimes it’s just a privilege.
Think the Cards have it in them? Praying for the first Ranger world title? Over it at this point? Let’s hear it.
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Tags: Albert Pujols Poo-Holes World Serieseseses
Yeah, I have been waiting to post “WHERE IS YOUR A-ROD NOW” for a bad-pun aeon! I have no real content here… except that the Rangers are cursing the sports writer that called Pujols “cowardly” in Game 2. DUDE. Don’t make it ANGRY.
We missed the first part of the game last night, but I had listened to enough commentary to know that he had already hit two bombs. Later, watching the game in bed, I was watching Pujols’ last at-bat thinking “You know, I bet he’ll hit another one right here”. Then I looked away for a minute, only to hear my husband say “Oh, holy crap, there’s three”.
I’d love to see the Rangers get one, but I’m kind of going for the Cards because A) I love their story this year and B) the Rangers knocked out my Tigers and I take sick pleasure in seeing Ogando give up 4 runs on .1 innings.
Rangers fan, been suffering way too long. Thankfully it looks like Good Dutch has showed up tonight.
…”Dutch.” Love it. Eighty years ago, there was always a guy named “Dutch” rattling around the majors; it’s such a good, chewy nickname.
I actually thought he threw pretty well in Game 6 of the ALCS, also–gave up three home runs, but they were all Ballpark specials…to the right-center alley (377, yeesh), one didn’t make the first row, one in the first row, one in the second row.
Lots of Rangers fans find him extremely frustrating, because he is so immature and is almost as likely to not get out of the first inning as he is to throw a shutout. But there aren’t a lot of lefties who throw four shutouts in their age 24 season–just because he could be better doesn’t mean we should be complaining!
But I am a Dutch apologist.
I hope you’re not sticking up for that disgusting mustache. Or, as I will now call facial hair of this type, “that disgustache.”
My husband has taken to yelling at the television every time The Dutch is on screen. I don’t think he has anything against the guy. He just really, really hates that mustache. “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE TWELEVE!” “Honey, he can’t hear you.”
“Disgustache”. Hee.
Seriously – that looks like a kid who should be on a little league team! Presumably he’ll grow into that face soon. Disgustache, indeed.
I won’t stick up for the disgustache, but I do think it provides hilarious contrast to all the lumberjack beards that have shown up lately. Plus, from what I gather Dutch is quite the goofball, so my guess is that he knows the ‘stache looks silly, but keeps it anyway for laughs. (Okay, I guess that’s sticking up for it a little.)
The ‘lose one, win one’ roller coaster that the Rangers are on is making me nauseous and it’s a pattern they’ll have to break if they want to win 4 of 7. Here’s hoping we get another W in front of the home town crowd tonight. Go Rangers!
I have a permanent berth on the anti-La Russa bandwagon, so I’m bummed that the Cards are on fire this postseason. His defensive, childish, “it’s everyone’s fault but mine” is a horrible representation of the sport and encourages bad behavior by his players. Made my week when the MLB fined him for snarking at the umps! Sadly, fate has smiled upon them, and I find myself in bizarro-land, rooting for an AL team. …Go Texas?!
Oops, lost the word “attitude” in there. Probly goes without saying though. ; )
El Hombre, indeed.
Chiming in on the wonky strike zone from last night. I repsect the Rangers for taking advantage of the inside call, good teams are supposed to make use of the weird happenstance in a game, but that does NOT make me any less angry that the inside call worked almost exclusively to the Rangers’ benefit.
Happy to be heading back to STL to finish this one off, however it shakes out. Go Cards!
Okay, Disgustache needs to shave, but his little play-by-play here is pretty funny.
I’m Team Cardinals. Can’t stand the Rangers. Also, I want Lance Berkman to win a ring. Ten seasons with the Astros is not very conducive to ring winning.
Man, Ron Washington finally figured out what Jim Leyland said in the 2006 WS about Pujols – JUST WALK HIM. Seriously, I’m amazed it took this long. Unless your pitcher is on fire like Holland was on Sunday, just give the man his base and thank the Good Lord he didn’t hurt you.
On a related note, apparently walking Pujols reduces the Cards to a team of Little League nancyboys, because man, was that ever pathetic tonight. 11 men left on, 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position, CJ Wilson walking everything in sight, and we…..lose. The Cardinals should have won that game going away. Carpenter made two bad pitches, gave us 7 innings of 2 run ball, and we could not score anyone. Washington dared Matt Holliday to beat the Rangers tonight, and he won that bet.
So now it’s two at home for all the marbles. Somewhere in St. Louis my dad is making sure he has enough paper bags to breathe into. Still believe; how can I not after this crazy season? Go Cards!
I’m a Royals fan living in Springfield, MO. As if being a Royals fan isn’t enough, we also have the Cards AA team here. I’m pulling for the Rangers but its really just schadenfreude.
@ Ricky P: During the NLCS, John Smoltz made the same observation about walking AP. At one point, he said he was going to pack up and go back to the hotel if the Brewers pitched to him again. They walked him moments later.
That was an awful game last night. TLR’s bullpen phone excuse makes me crazy– as if he wouldn’t have stormed onto the field and demanded a time out due to an equipment problem. Poor leadership. And if he did have the problem and failed to request a stop? Worse leadership.
Here’s hoping Garcia has the game of his young career and we see Game 7.
Dudes. The Cardinals have put St. Louis through the wringer the past few months and they aren’t letting up on us these last few games. I want to believe, but they aren’t making it easy. Still, I’ll be parked in front of the TV yelling like they can hear me.
@Lazeeper: Here’s the thing; Miklasz pointed out in his column today that we can’t blame Tony for Monday’s debacle. The Cardinals hitters need to be held accountable here. People are letting that 16 run game cloud what’s really been going on here. The Cardinals are hitting less than .200 in the 3 losses to the Rangers. I actually commend Tony in a lot of ways for keeping the focus on himself and keeping the attention off of his hitters going into the most important games of the season, allowing them to relax a bit. Taking those bullets can’t be that fun, really, but it would be worse for everyone to be just drilling Holliday about his lack of production in the postseason.
And that’s the long and short of it – we’ve lost 3 games by a combined score of 10-3 (2-1, 4-0, 4-2). That is not the offense that was the best in the majors this year, and there’s not a lot of time left to figure out how to hit the damn ball before it’s too late. They’re not going to let Pujols beat them, they’ve made that abundantly clear. Someone else has to, or we’re in trouble.
@Ricky, Klaw made this point on Baseball Today yesterday — I forget the exact number, but it’s something like 22 runs total, 16 in one game, so…the bullpen-phone debacle is a convenient distraction from the fact that the Cards aren’t hitting that much. (Or that Ranger pitching is good; give Tejas a bit of credit there, Wilson’s walkathons aside.) Ten guys LOB in one game is not a great stat.
@Ricky & Sars: True, the team’s failure to score is the heart of this story– whether it’s great pitching or poor hitting or a little bit of both. The LOB numbers for the series are crazy making.
Having read TLR’s follow-up comments to the bullpen phone thing, I’ve managed to put it in perspective. My initial fan reactions are, admittedly, sometimes rash.
@Laz: Exactly. 33 years of being a Cards fan, from Herzog to Torre to Tony has taught me that we’ve been pretty lucky for a long time. Except for Torre. (Sars, how did that work? He got to New York and learned how to manage? Never figured it out, honestly; but I liked Torre, so I was genuinely happy for him. He got a raw deal in St. Louis, having to follow Whitey and having to deal with the penny-pinching ownership at the time.) This is our 6th pennant since 1982; at this point, folks in Cleveland would probably be willing to ritually sacrifice goats to achieve that type of success. But still, knowing all that, I was screaming at the television every time we left another runner on – sometimes, the fan just comes out.
La Russa, love him or hate him, has always been an overprotective manager of his players. Deep down, I really think he’s saying to himself: “This explanation is complete bullshit, but I really don’t want Freese being asked for the 300th time why he was so hot in the NLCS, but can’t hit a beach ball right now, so I’ll throw myself on the train tracks.”
It doesn’t really change much, though: we either hit the ball at Busch, or we set our tee times. I would say that I’m happy with how well we’ve done, and I am; but once you’re willing to settle for that, you can’t win a damn thing. ‘Getting there’ isn’t a substitute for winning. Go Cards!
“God, I love baseball.” — Roy Hobbs
Baseball is the best. What a game tonight.
Did the Cards just literally rip the shirt off Freese’s body?! That. Is. AWESOME.
Holy crap. Cannot sleep. Plan to head to St. Louis tomorrow for Game 7. Go Cards!!!
I couldn’t watch, so I contented myself with listening from the other room. And then I slipped on my sock and nearly killed myself running into the living room. And I keep rewinding and rewatching that old lady go for the ball.
“What Sars said.” – Every Cardinals fan tonight.
@Yahtzee Didn’t they look like a pack of hungry dogs? That. Was. AWESOME and I’m not a Cards fan.
Games like last night make me, as a non-fan of baseball, understand why people watch the sport.
It’s going to be an even longer off-season than usual, you guys. This lead-up to the post-season and the post-season itself have been pretty damned good. People will write books.
I’m rooting for the Rangers, but DAMN that was an amazing game last night. This series has been pretty fantastic all around, but there was just so much packed into that game! Bittersweet when the WS is so great, since it climaxes right into…the off-season. Completely bummed that I will be on a plane tonight, a plane that almost certainly won’t have TVs.
@Yahtzee: There’s a guy on the team (Nick Punto) who has been doing that. They nicknamed him The Shredder. He’s apparently not above ripping dress shirts off of players during a HappyFlight.
What a crazy, wonderful, amazing, jaw dropping, post season. GO CARDS!!
@ Jody and Lazeeper: Have you seen the pictures of the jersey? It is literally ripped in half. I love lots of things about different sports, but I believe that the walk-off dog pile is my very favorite thing of all: grown acting like very young, joyful boys.
I went to bed after the Hamilton HR. (And the shot in the dugout of Ian Kinsler rubbing Hamilton’s cheeks and hair in a very affectionate way. Supercute.) And woke up this morning all, Game 7? Awesome.
I also love, in a way, Hamilton’s assertion that God promised him a home run but not a win. (Note: link includes video that obnoxiously starts playing automatically.) Like he’s trying to explain to the Ranger faithful (in several senses of the word) why God is subjecting them to a Game 7.
Apropos of nothing, was Nolan Ryan always neckless? Every time they cut to a shot of him watching, or rather glowering, I want to break out the Rocky Horror heckles.
Last night was one of the best baseball games I’ve ever watched. EVER. I loved how the team tore Freese’s shirt off of him. I said to my husband as we watched the ball go over the fence–“That is every ballplayer’s dream, happening in real life to him, right there.” Can’t wait to watch Game 7 tonight.
And “they” thought this series would be boring!
Do they have to stop playing? Do we have to end this Series? Such worthy adversaries on both sides, such an even series, such great respect and performances on both sides, this is what baseball has always been about for me. I commend Texas for being such great opponents; I could not respect them more. Let’s just make it a best of 11, or best of 13, or something. Just don’t let this ride end.
Go Cards – play a hard nine.
I was so angry with myself. I fought to stay awake last night while watching in bed, remember Texas being in the lead going into the eighth . . . then woke up this morning not having any recollection of even turning off the television. My last thoughts while watching were that Texas pretty much had it in the bag. Looked at MLB At Bat on my phone this morning and started swearing. Of COURSE I would watch those teams make error after error, fall asleep, and miss some of the most exciting World Series baseball ever.
Sars, your tweet about people thinking baseball is boring was actually what told me that something serious had gone down last night. For some reason, it was the tweet my phone’s Twitter app happened to show first thing this morning. Taunting me. I actually let “Chuck” record tonight to watch and that is a big freaking deal in this house.
To Misters Buck and Carver – If you really think that two runs scored in the first inning of a game we have not yet won has erased from our memory the heartbreak of last night’s loss, then you are even dumber than I took you for.
Freese is sitting at home thinking…”Did I just make MVP? of the WS???” and Pujols is thinking “What do I have to do, walk on water?”
Hee.
The St. Louis Cardinals are the best thing about this town (lived in the Lou all my life). I’m so glad my daughter now has the same memories I have of “celebrating good times” in 1982. She was a little too young to appreciate 2006, but this one will be remembered forever.
As a classy end to the entire crazy thing: TLR retires. Being in the stands for Game 7 will go down as one of my favorite baseball memories of all times. Three and a half months until pitchers and catchers report!
On my college diploma, it says ‘Bachelor of the Arts’. My major was English, focused on Creative Writing.
I could have written this postseason game by game, pitch by pitch, but the cliche is true: no one would have believed it. As a proud Cardinal fan, as a proud baseball fan, this postseason had everything I could have wanted.
I’d like to say one thing that I touched on in one of my earlier posts; thank you to the Texas Rangers for being tough, classy opponents. Thank you for fighting hard, for pushing us to the limit, and for being adversaries worthy of respect. One of the things that I actually enjoyed the most about this series was the lack of trash-talking, twitter wars, and otherwise nonsensical conduct that has seemingly become accepted in professional sports.
And now that I’ve delivered my ‘get off the lawn, you young whippersnappers!’ speech, thanks to Sars and the other posters on this thread for making it a fun place to hang out for the last few weeks. You guys rock.(and/or roll)
Oh, and one more thing; goodbye, Tony. Thanks for 2 titles, 3 pennants, and 16 seasons of general awesomeness. Have a great retirement.