An Oddball reference? My hat’s off to you.
Way to go Cards!
Yeah!!!
World Champion St. Louis Cardinals!
As a baseball game, that was anticlimactic after last night’s—but I expected it to be. And at least the series as a whole wasn’t anticlimactic, as it is some years.
I came in here just to do this:
In September my girlfriend gave me an official World Series baseball that she received from a vendor at work. It came with the authentication label in a nice acrylic case. I made a joke that it would be great to get the ball signed at the Cardinal’s Winter Warmup in January after they win the Series. We laughed and I put it on the tv stand and didn’t touch it throughout the playoffs.
After the last out I picked up the case and took the ball out for the first time. It felt like a championship.
Heh heh…I just got this text from a Cubs fan:
“Not only do the Cards win the series, but Corey F’N Patterson is getting a ring?!?!”
Me too 
And Ryan Theriot.
Congratulations Cards and Cards’ fans. Y’all deserved it and played excellent ball. As to the Rangers, I’m still too heartbroken to comment. I think all just go back to crying like a little girl until next season. Good game LaRussa and company.
I feel sorry for the Rangers and their fans.
:Shrug: That’s the part you chose to quote, out of the whole story. One might actually think that’s what you had in mind, mightn’t one? Particularly given the choler of the rant you followed your response with.
LaRussa’s methods just won the World Series. Again. Maybe that hasn’t sunk in yet for you. He’s going into the Hall of Fame because of them. Maybe that hasn’t sunk in yet, either. Or maybe someday it will.
Baseball is perhaps the best sport there is for learning sportsmanship, IMHO. I suggest to you that your education about it remains incomplete.
Take that, Ex-Cub Factor! The end of the Final Remaining Curse is already underway.
Great job, Cards. They got it done when they needed to get it done. Too bad for the long-time dedicated Rangers fans, though - I hear they’re a very nice couple. 
There’s always the Arizona Fall League and the Dominican Winter League and suchlike if you really need a fix. Or you can remind yourself that pitchers and catchers report in about 120 days.
[MODERATING]
I have specifically warned everyone in the thread to refrain from personally accusing others of not understanding baseball. Evidently you missed the memo or forgot about it. Either way, your bad.
This is a formal warning for disregarding moderator instructions and for threadshitting. Discussion in this thread will remain on the subject of baseball, playoff baseball in particular. Do not do this again.
mhendo, back off.
RickJay
Moderator
Back off? The guy asked me a question, and i gave him my answer.
I’ve been in this thread happily discussing baseball for the past few weeks with a whole bunch of people, and everyone’s been having a great time. Despite the fact that we all root for different teams, we’ve been having enjoyable discussions and celebrating one of the greatest months of baseball in the history of the game.
Then, someone linked to a funny little story about Josh Hamilton’s religious beliefs, and i make an offhand observation about one part of that story that i found funny. I wasn’t taking a jab at anyone; i was simply having a chuckle at something i thought was amusing. I certainly wasn’t taking a jab at ElvisL1ves who, as far as i knew, wasn’t even participating in the thread anymore, given his complete absence from the conversation over the preceding weeks.
In response, Elvis re-entered the thread for no other reason than to start up an argument directly with me, and i responded in a way that explicitly answered his question. He asked what i thought of La Russa’s comments about Moneyball, and i explained in pretty straightforward detail why those comments don’t really affect the way that i think about baseball, or about Lewis’ book.
And, despite Elvis’s recent (and predictably condescending) response, i wasn’t even making a comment about La Russa’s abilities as a manager. He is clearly a Hall of Fame manager and, despite some rather inexplicable decisions in this year’s World Series, has been a successful manager over a long period of time. La Russa was, in fact, the first manager i really knew anything about, thanks to a book by George Will that devoted considerable attention to his management strategies. He’s a great manager.
But that’s exactly what he is: a manager. He’s not the General Manager. He’s not the guy who puts the team together, who decides who to trade or how much to pay. He works with the players that he’s given. Michael Lewis’ book wasn’t really about managing a team, in the way that Tony La Russa manages a team. It was about putting a team together in a way that takes advantage of market inefficiencies. I’m not sure whether or not Elvis is one of the people who are happy to shit on Moneyball without ever having actually read it, but he certainly gives that impression sometimes. I was simply pointing out that, despite the fact that La Russa is a great manager who clearly knows a lot about baseball, his opinion of a movie doesn’t really change my opinion of Michael Lewis’ book, or about the value of statistical analysis to the running of a baseball team.
I’m happy to leave it there, if that’s what you want for this thread, but i’m not going to “back off” answering a question that was directed straight at me just because Elvis insists on returning to the thread just to pick a fight rather than chat about the awesome World Series that we just watched. I didn’t insult him, i didn’t break the rules, and, to be honest, i’m a little annoyed that you seem to think i’m about as responsible for the situation as he is.
I agree with your position here, which is (well, among othe reasons) why I awarded a warning to Elvisl1ves and not to you. I wasn’t warning you - so obviously I am not assigning you the same level of blame - but asking you not to retaliate. “You don’t understand the sport” is a derailment method that I am losing tolerance for, so we’re clamping down on it.
If my comment to you was a bit more brusque than necessary, I apologize. It was evidently not very clear what I was asking for.
Fair enough.
I wasn’t going to retaliate further anyway, because it was just derailing the very nice World Series discussion. I’ll leave it alone.
C’mon, we all saw you talking to your catcher about a bean ball against their next batter.
Congrats to all the Cards fans! Heck of a job getting your “11 in 11.”
As for Ranger fans…there’s always next year. Trite but true as I well know. Had to wait 53 years myself to see Spain pick-up it first WC.
Great series, if not for the “purists.”
A final word on the “best fans in baseball” from MLB.
I am still speechless. There is no way to accurately describe the impact the Cardinals made here in St. Louis. Game 3 & game 6 were historic games for any team but the fact that the Cardinals did it twice in one series. The whole behind on the wild card situation. A full 7 game world series? This one is for the ages. And don’t get me wrong, I seriously enjoyed watching the Rangers play and had the Cardinals not been my home team I would have bet money on Texas. Texas lineup was stacked and sometimes it seemed like they could score at will.
So many players deserved MVP in my opinion, Molina seemed the most consistent batter for us, Pujols murdered game 3, Berkman shined when it was most important, Allen Craig… Then pitching, Garcia & Carpenter. They were all so much fun to watch. But that young guy who we call the home town hero David Freese did damn near the impossible, a few times… He truly deserved. St. Louis deserves the awesome story that goes a long with their win.
I never watched baseball in my life until a few games into the Cardinals & Brewers series, I caught on pretty quick though. But I have got to ask hard core baseball fans though, is every post season this damn exciting?