With the October Classic upon us, its time for SCL’s Fresh Take, ala Baseball! It’s fitting that the New York Yankees with their 26 Championships and the defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies square off in the World Series; on the flip side, how bad is it to be a Cleveland Indians fan? Past Indian pitchers CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee square off in Game One of the Series, while Indians fans get to wonder what if. Not to mention, if you add in the Championship rounds with Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez and Charlie Manuel, it looked like a Cleveland reunion out there!
The Yankees and Phillies led their respective leagues in runs and home runs and with the right field jet stream in new Yankee Stadium and the short flower beds in Citizens Bank Park, will anyone be surprised if we set an new record for home runs in a World Series this year? The Phillies have 4 guys who hit over thirty home runs while the Yankees counter with 5 who hit more than twenty. Get ready for the shooting gallery!
Is there a cold weather team bias to the World Series now? Everyone talks about the “dog days of summer” and how lousy it is to play in Arlington, TX or Miami, FL in July and August with 100 degree days, but have you noticed that seven of the last ten World Series have been won by cold weather teams? And this year the trend has to continue after Philly and New York spun out the boys from California. As we extend the baseball year later and later, its seems less and less likely to see a team from the South or the West representing their leagues or at least winning the whole thing…
So time for the prediction! It looks like the studs from each team, Ryan Howard and Alex Rodriguez are ready to rumble, but it’s still pitching that wins in the playoffs. Both teams have Aces and Jokers in their rotations, offenses in high gear and this will be a great series to watch. I’m tired about hearing how suspect the Phillies bullpen is, especially after they knocked out the LA Dodgers in five games. I think the Phillies October magic will continue and I’ll take Philadelphia in Six!
The Philadelphia Phillies need to take a page from the New York Yankees handbook. Given a home series with the floundering Florida Marlins, the Phillies proceeded to screw the pooch over the weekend and watched a seven game division lead fade to four after a three game Marlin sweep! Meanwhile, the Yankees strangled their bitter rivals, the Boston Red Sox, taking four from the Sawx with timely hitting and fabulous pitching and taking a firm hold of the division lead. Speaking of pitching, what has become of Phillies Ace Cole Hamels who got lit up again this weekend and fell to 7-7 on the year???
All my life I have dreamt about a career in Sports; player, broadcaster, executive, any would have been great. In retrospect, I think I may have passed on GM of a major sports franchise. I wrote earlier about Roy Halladay and the need for Toronto and Philadelphia to make a deal and GMs Ruben Amaro of the Phillies and JP Ricciardi of the Bluejays (both seen above) went toe to toe to make it happen.
It appears that Ricciardi either dramatically underestimated Amaro or overestimated his market position. Ricciardi has been widely speculated to be a “dead man walking” with his only chance of survival being a drastic salary purge of the Bluejays bloated budget. Plus his current wishy washy handling of the Halladay affair and wide spread use of the local and national media in trade “negotiations”, did nothing to endear himself to already jaded Toronto fans. By asking for a king’s ransom for Halladay and not budging, Ricciardi watched the trade market shift gears and blow right by him, most likely cementing his fate as a casualty of the trade wars this coming off-season.
So it appears that Buster Olney of ESPN has his thoughts on why the Philadelphia Phillies need to sign Toronto Bluejay ace pitcher Roy Halladay, effectively trying to steal my thunder. Thankfully, while his opinions are solid they do not quite emulate mine and make my case even better! As ex head coaching great Herm Edwards stated (okay so Edwards was not great as a head coach; he was a fine motivator and defensive expert, but didn’t have a great eye for talent and was too soft on his players, but I digress…) “You play to win the game!” or in this case, the World Series. How would Halladay help the Phillies? Well…
Perhaps the pedigree of being a World Series Champion can finally get Ryan Howard off the All-Star snub list. The former MVP and fastest player to 100 (and soon to be 200) home runs, was leading the league in home runs and RBIs last July. That still did not stop him from watching the game at home and becoming the first player in history to not make the All-Star team while leading in those two offensive categories. 
