Magic Will Decide the Series

On the eve of the greatest World Series since 1986, when the Mets prevailed over the Red Sox in seven games, with heroes named Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, Bobby Ojeda and Ray Knight, Sid Hernandez and Mookie Wilson, Lenny Dykstra and Darryl Strawberry, I gleefully look forward to witnessing another Series for the Ages, one featuring great pitching, great hitting, great home parks and even better home crowds. And perhaps magic too.

This grand event comes on the tail-end of a week of Yankee whining, coming off a Series featuring failed Yanks pitching and even more dismal Yankee hitting. You couldn’t write home about Yankee fielding either as Arod and Jeter played deep and then couldn’t make the throws. A Yankee-hater loves hearing Yanks fans whine.

But, even better than that, the Yankee future looks ridiculous. While other serious teams (like Boston) seek to shed their older players while they still have value and well before their inevitable decline, the Yanks will pursue the long and painful path. Keeping all these old guys while limiting their playing time and plugging in utility players, mixing and matching with lesser players to ensure a decade or so of future futility. Oh baby! Bring on the Don Mattingly years.

They’ll re-sign Derek Jeter, of course, justifying it with nothing but non-baseball reasons, i.e. he’s a legacy player, he’s the captain, he’s the franchise, yada yada. And Mariano Rivera, at 41 years of age and already showing signs of decline in 2010, will also be eagerly courted. Having already re-signed Arod and Posada, that pretty much ensures they’ll be an old tired club for not just next year but well beyond.

So, at the same time as I can look forward to this Series, and be happily oblivious to the outcome, as both teams were my favorites in their respective leagues, I get the security of knowing the Yanks will be worse, maybe much worse, and the Mets will get better. (As this is written, the Mets are pursuing at least two of the finest General Managers in the game today).

Why do I like the Rangers so much? How about Nolan Ryan making a mockery of the Yanks obsession with pitch counts? How about keeping their manager on board despite his problem with drugs? How about their working with Josh Hamilton, the MVP in the American League to everyone outside the New York area, to help him beat an even more pronounced drug problem?

How about the way they developed their youth, evidenced by the successes of Michael Young and Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus? How about their mid-season moves, out-Yankee-ing the Yanks for Cliff Lee and acquiring one of the best post-season catchers ever in Bengie Molina?

Okay, that’s enough rhapsodizing on the Rangers for, in the Giants, they’ll be facing another team that will be the most dangerous team the Rangers have faced this post-season. In fact, it was the Giants that let Molina go, only to replace him with arguably the best rookie in the National League, a young fella named Buster Posey.

If any team has better pitching than the Rangers, it would have to be the Giants. Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and young Bumgarner are, one thru four, arguably better than Lee, C.J. Wilson, Colby Lewis and Tommy Hunter. They have a great closer in Brian Wilson and a great setup guy in Javier Lopez. They match up well with the Rangers closer Neftali Feliz and Lopez beats anybody the Rangers throw out there, in either Oliver or O’Day, Holland or Ogando.

I have a feeling the Rangers will be missing that setup guy. If baseball champions are characterized by pitching alone, then the Giants have a distinct advantage. Even giving the Rangers the Cliff Lee starts, Games 1 and 5, they’ll be in trouble against Cain and Sanchez and possibly Bumgarner too.

For what it’s worth, I think Lee will win Game 1 in San Fran. Then the Giants will tie the Series in Game 2 behind Cain. Then the Giants will take the lead in Texas in Game 3 with Sanchez pitted against ALCS hero Colby Lewis. There will then be a furor over whether Cliff Lee can go in Game Four. He won’t. Bumgarner and Hunter will duel evenly in Game 4 but the Giants relief pitching will give them Game 4, making it 3-1 Giants and with the Series headed back to that city by the bay.

But Lee will pitch in Game 6, probably again matched against Lincecum. The Rangers, now with Lee and with their backs to the wall, will take Game 6, thus creating a Game 7 scenario of Matt Cain for the Giants going head-to-head with C.J. Wilson. This matchup will favor the Giants again and, I’d have to think, unless the Rangers can pull off some more playoff magic, he Giants could very well win this 2010 World series.

The magic could come from Hamilton or Cruz, Kinsler or Andrus. The Giants have their own list of potential heroes but do they really match up? Posey and Huff, Uribe and Torres? I don’t think so. It’ll be pitching that wins the Series for these Giants, and if not, they won’t win it at all.

It’ll be up to Matt Cain and Brian Wilson. If they can’t keep the Rangers under 3 runs in that deciding game, the Series will go to those magic Rangers. If Cain can hold those Rangers bats down for 7 more innings (he’ll have already won Game 2 to get to this point), he’ll wind up being the Series MVP. If not, then the MVP will go to one of those other guys in red, and my money would be on the wunderkind, Josh Hamilton.

I could live with either result, I’m sure, but all things considered, I’d have to side with the Rangers of Ryan and Hamilton, Michael Young and Ian Kinsler.

Besides, the Cowboys are dead. Texas needs a real America’s team…..

A Heart in San Francisco

This fine Friday is special. Why? Because I’m leaving town, bound for San Francisco, that city by the sea, but also home of the 49ers and baseball Giants and geez, whoever cared about those things before?

But the Giants’ve got the freak, Tim Lincecum, and Matt Cain, and that probably beats Sabathia and Burnet. And the Niners have a crazy old linebacker from Jersey named Mike Singletary, who’s been turning an annual pigskin joke into a real live football team.

Lincecum is 14-5 with 244 strikeouts in 207 innings, not too shabby I’d say for a team with no cleanup hitter, well, to be honest, they really have no hitter of any kind, leadoff, a guy to move the runner over, a real live number 3 hitter; you name it, the Giants don’t have it.

Why do they call him the freak though? Maybe it has something to do with being 5’11” and 170 pounds. Maybe it’s his weird delivery that features a whip-like release that ends up somewhere real close to his foot. Or maybe it’s just his demeanor, which is kind of laid back and unworldly, other-worldly?

Anyway, if they just had Lincecum at the top of the rotation, they’d be scary enough, but then there’s Matt Cain too. Now he’s only 13-6 with a paltry by comparison 155 K’s in 202 innings, but how many guys have a 2.71 ERA and 1.17 WHIP?

Oh, and there’s Barry Zito at 3.94 and Jonathan Sanchez at 4.16 and oh, yeah, they picked up an old retread (are there any new retreads) named Brad Penny from Boston, a city obviously not to his liking. But he likes San Fran real well apparently as he’s given up just 4 whole runs in 22 innings in 3 games in September.

Gone are the days when all anybody heard about was Barry Bonds, although they still revere him there, strange as that may seem to me. But then, there’s Giambi and Arod and McGuire and Sosa and about a hundred others. Of course, they liked Bonds before we knew about all those other guys. Maybe it’s having watched all those majestic drives into the water. That would probably do it.

As luck would have it, the Giants won’t be playing at home this weekend. They’ll be in La La-land, home of the Dodgers and, oh yeah, another freak named Manny Ramirez, who seems so much less freaky since his name appeared in the steroids-yes column.

Nevertheless, the Dodgers lead in the West by 5 over the Rockies and 8 ½ over San Fran’s finest. But they’re just 3 ½ behind the Rocks for the wildcard with 16 games left to play. And that will mean 6 more starts at least for Lincecum/Cain and a guarantee that the rest won’t be easy with Zito, Sanchez and Penny going.

The relief’s not too shabby either with Brian Wilson closing and Jeremy Affeldt setting things up. Wilson looks kinda freaky too, by the way, but he’s got 34 saves and a 2.69 ERA so whos going to make a big thing about hair.

So I won’t be seeing the Giants first-hand or experiencing the thrill of AT&T Park but I shall be feeling that buzz, a buzz you feel more in smaller and less cynical markets than New York, like Denver for sure and even Chicago for that matter.

The buzz will be that much stronger as the Niners are playing Seattle at home and both teams won their openers, but the Niners did it versus last year’s NFC Super Bowl team, the Arizona Cardinals while Seattle just walked all over an overmatched Rams squad.

But it all started for these Niners against Seattle last year. That was Singletary’s finest moment for most NFL fans (but not Mike himself) as he benched his star tight end Vernon Davis at halftime and dropped his pants to make a point. And, since that game, his point seems to have been made.

“…cannot play with them, cannot win with them, cannot coach with them. Can’t do it. I want winners. I want players that want to win.” And since then, the Niners have won, going 6-3 since that game and since inserting Shaun Hill at the quarterback position.

Ya think that doesn’t inspire SF fans? I know it inspires me, and I’ll bet it inspired at least some of those players. (Davis is now a team captain). You sure can’t point to any one guy, or even any one portion of the team, as the reason they’re winning. They just seem to be eking out these team victories.

Defense is a good part of it though and the Cards found that out last week as Kurt Warner was harrassed into mistake after mistake. The running game is part of it too, even though they couldn’t run very well against the Cards. The passing game got them the win in that one.

But that’s par for the course for this team. Whatever it takes to win from week to week, they seem to come up with. They’re my pick to win that Western Division this year, and this game against Seattle should go a long way towards deciding that one.

It’s too bad they haven’t yet been able to sign their Number 1 pick in the draft, WR Michael Crabtree, even though their offer was said to be for 5 years and 22 million, 16 of it guaranteed. Even that enormous sum is apparently low-balling a Number 10 pick overall. They supposedly are trying to appeal to the player directly. I don’t hold out too much hope for that effort, and I’d rather see them spend that money on a more established wideout.

But even the holdout might eventually work to their advantage, especially if they can manage to beat up the Seahawks a little this Sunday.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it , almost as much as that the Jets have taken the Pats and those G-Men the Boyz.