Nobody thought of the Yankees has “have-nots” after 2004. They won the World Series just five years later.
How people perceive the Cardinals and Cubs is an independent thing from their performance against each other, which is a third entity, really. Even outside of the Midwest, where the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry is something people generally don’t know or care about, the Cardinals are perceived as being drenched in glory and the Cubs are the symbol of generation-spanning futility.
Right, and I’m asking how much you think a win in this series would shift that perception. My take is that it depends largely on what the Cubs go on to achieve this postseason.
I was at Yankee Stadium in early 2005 and they were selling t-shirts graphically depicting the number of World Series won by the Sox and Yankees since 1918 (27-1 or whatever it was). I saw few people wearing them, and I think it was because they seemed like a pathetic effort to deny the psychological impact of the previous year’s playoffs. If the Sox had merely won the Series while the Yankees were having an off year, I think such a shirt would have annoyed Sox fans. As it was, the only reaction I can imagine them having is gleeful giggling and chortling “Yeah, but we own your asses NOW!”.
ETA: Holy Schwarber, the game has started! Gotta get offline and hope I can remain unspoiled until I get home to my DVR tonight.
I still don’t think there necessarily was a “have not” mentality for the Yankees after 2004. It’s just that many people considered the Red Sox to be “Yankees-lite”. I mean no one can really kill the Yankees monster. Even in the 1980s people hated the Yankees because they were the Yankees - even though they were incredibly mediocre. And Yankees fans still look down on the Red Sox.
If Kershaw should get in trouble early tonight, what are the chances that we see Greinke in this one? Would Mattingly gamble everything on a win today, if it meant that he’d have neither of his aces available to start Game 5?
I highly doubt it, considering we used two starters last night. I don’t think there is anyone left who could give us even 3 quality innings and I don’t think we would survive a bullpen game. The Mets are going to go with one of their heavyweights for game 5, so we need at least 6, preferably 7 innings from Kershaw in my opinion. Hatcher and Janson can close it out. Likewise with Greinke in game five. I honestly see no other way.
Yeah, but now we are guaranteed to see a World Series champion that hasn’t been seen since at least 1993, if ever. And a team-vs.-team matchup that we have definitely never seen.
The odds of using Greinke is basically zero, Greinke doesn’t really do short rest. He’s much more of a creature of habit than Kershaw is and doesn’t handle alterations to his routine well. On top of that if we burned both of them tonight all we’d have is a dumpster fire to close out the series so I’m not sure it would be worthwhile.
I’ve only been to two baseball games in my life: one of them was Cubs vs. Astros at Wrigley. My dad was born and raised in Chicago, and has been a Cubs fan his whole life. He is guardedly optimistic.
I was living at Addision and Racine in 1988 when the first night game was played at Wrigley. The whole area went bat shit crazy. You may want to leave town if it all boils down to one game at Wrigley for the whole enchilada.
Kershaw finally makes it through the 7th unscathed. Janson made me nervous in the 8th, but he sure turned it up a notch in the 9th. Now, it rests on Greinke.