Another take on the Rockies’ faith-based baseball in today’s USA Today (the story was filed before game 4):
"The Rockies, who entered Sunday trailing the Boston Red Sox 3-0, may have nothing but faith, refusing to believe their first World Series would end with an embarrassing four-game sweep.
“I think God is the reason we got this far,” Rockies reliever Matt Herges said. "We’ve done some amazing things this year (that are) hard to know. Something is going on. I think we may be getting favors from God.
“It’s not like the Red Sox are going against God. I’m sure they have Christians over there. But we realize what a blessing this is.”
Maybe God tired of hearing about all the blessings he was supposedly showering on the Rockies and decided to reward the team that wasn’t so noisy about its religiosity.
So if the Sox knew A-Rod would put up great stats, but may also disrupt the team and not get back in the Series as a result, they should take him anyway to bask in his greatness, team championships in a team sport be damned?
And I’m sure many 40’s and 50’s Red Sox fans would trade Chad Curtis and just one series title for many years of Ted Williams and his no titles.
But the whole point of my post was how ridiculous this is. If you traded Williams for Curtis, those Red Sox teams wouldn’t have won a championship because of it, and probably would have won a fair number fewer games. With Ted fucking Williams in left field, the mid-90’s Yankees probably would have won 130 games a season and still would have won the titles they won.
There’s no magical quality about Curtis that makes him a “winner;” he just had the good fortune to play on World Series teams.
There’s no magical quality about Alex Rodriguez that has led to him not winning the World Series. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the team that signs him will very likely be favored to win the Series going into 2008. Sometimes the favorite doesn’t win, but that doesn’t make it the fault of the favorite’s best player. Without their third baseman, the Yankees would have watched the Tigers get spanked by the Indians this year. He carried a team that was otherwise barely above average into the playoffs, and then his team ran into a buzzsaw and Chien-Ming Wang forgot how to get outs.
Whatever. I’m not the man’s agent, and unless he lands on the Mets somehow I’ll go back to rooting against him at some point next year, so I’m going to abandon this silly crusade for now.
All season long, Chien-Ming Wang is good enough to be the #1 pitcher on the New York Yankees. In the regular season, Wang could live with the jerk-off playing third base behind them. But then, once the playoffs started, Alex Rodriguez starts sending off jerk waves. Don’t you see? Those jerk waves are the reason Wang could barely get through five innings in two starts combined. I have it on good authority that A-Rod also managed to injure Roger Clemens and bring a swarm of gnats down on Joba Chamberlain, all through sheer force of his own assholitude. This year, A-Rod’s reverse aura finally got to the Captain, too - it is *Alex Rodriguez’s fault *that Derek Jeter hit into about 20 double plays in four games.
The power of his jerkitude was such that he caused the rest of the Yankees to play poorly, enough so to counteract his own production, and that is why they didn’t win the World Series. It wasn’t Wang; it wasn’t the gnats; it certainly wasn’t Jeter, who is actually made of positive karma; had to be A-Rod.
But that trade is possibly only in imaginary fairytale land. The Red Sox could have traded Ted Williams for an okay player like Chad Curtis anytime they wanted to. If you exchange Ted Williams for Chad Curtis - who, by the way, had a reputation for being a disruptive, bigoted asshole that every team he played for wanted to get rid of once they found out what he was like - the Red Sox of 1939-1960 don’t win a World Series anyway.
There’s scant evidence A-Rod “disrupts” his team. They pulled off one hell of a comeback to make the postseason this year. If he actually doesn’t return to New York (and I am not sure the book on that is entirely written, if for no other reason that nobody else can afford the demands Scott Boras might make - Boras has been heard to say he might want $500 million over 10 years) it’s a huge, huge blow to the Yankees.
“This guy is a jerk who hurts his team” is a big load of bullshit in 99% of all claimed cases, in baseball at least.
No, I got your point but didn’t convey mine right. If in an alternative universe Ted Wlliams died in WWII and the Red Sox won the series in the 50’s without him, which universe would fans prefer- one with a great player and no titles, or whatever hack replaced him and titles?
Now I also agree, baseball is of course a team sport and there’s nothing about A-rod, except his poor playoff performances , which keep him from having been on a Series winning team. Yes, he could get traded to the Cubs and they could win five in a row, with A-Rod the star in all five- you never know.
My point is, so far after a decade he has not won a title, and the Sox and other teams have won without him. So why take an asshole who mere presence is not going to guarantee you a title or even close, especially when you have won two titles without him? If you knew for a fact whoever signed him wins the title next year, they should take him in an instant, but baseball is too much of a team sport to spend 35 mil a year on an asshole when you have proven you can win without him, not to mention what happens if someone making that much money gets injured, etc.
If Michael Jordan scores 56, usually the Bulls win. Tom Brady throws 5 TD’s Pats win, but in baseball A-rod goes 4-4 and the Yanks could very easily lose the game, so the big stats by your best player are not as aligned with winning in baseball, which is why teams without big stars have won the Series, but it is very rare in other sports.
What exactly is your impression of Red Sox fans, other than that you don’t like them because you’re still pissy over the ALCS? I mean, I haven’t decided that all Indians fans are bitter cranks.
Are they guaranteed the title now? You take him because he makes your team better. This means you’re more likely to win the title. It’s not difficult stuff to comprehend.
I’m worried about the Yankees, now with a big hole at 3rd base, backing up the money truck to Lowell’s door. That would suck because I’d have to drop him from my fantasy team, which has a strict no-Yankee rule.
Actually, I *have * a sense of humor. I’m not the one who’s been inexplicably pissy about everything from the quality of respective hometowns to whether or not clubhouse chemistry trumps stats.
, which keep him from having been on a Series winning team. Yes, he could get traded to the Cubs and they could win five in a row, with A-Rod the star in all five- you never know.