Richie Allen wrote:Not sure what the point is in going on about how Cruz should have caught that ball? Make us feel like we didn't really deserve to win? [expletive], we lost a playoff game where a completely routine ball caught our LF in the sack. There are lots of reasons and ways he doesn't come up with that ball, not to mention the insane pressure of the moment. I don't think we need to feel apologetic about the greatest baseball game of our lives.
Not to mention that we lost a WS game in some part because our manager and bullpen coach couldn't use the damn phone. If Cruz misplayed that ball (I'm not in that camp), the baseball god's owed us at least that.
I've watched that now 20 times and what I see is that Cruz momentarily slowed up going back, I don't think he was afraid of the wall I think he just momentarily misjudged the ball by about 8 feet - I think his initial step he thought the ball was on the warning track. Had he not done that, had he got a perfect break on the ball and a perfect route and went straight to the wall he has a good chance of making the catch - 75% maybe. But that's perfectly played, the ball was scorched and not an easy ball at all. I think the ball could have been caught, but wouldn't go as far as saying it should have been caught. It would have been a damn fine play if he made it.
Vidor wrote:Will the rest of our baseball-watching lives be anti-climactic?
It could be decades before anything that great happens again or it could be this year. That's why we keep tuning in. We don't want to dare miss it when it happens. I've never been so ready for baseball to start up again!
It may take a while for anything like that to happen involving the Cardinals again, who knows.
But I'm pretty darn confident we will see a lot of dramatics in the next few years in baseball. Whether they reach the status of a Buckner type play or this year's game 6 remains to be seen. But just look at recent history. The 2001 Series was pretty classic...2002 wasn't bad, either...2003 featured the Bartman incident...2004 was the Red Sox overcoming a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees...2005 was the White Sox turn...2006, well, that was nice...2007 sucked...You get the idea.
pioneer98 wrote:It may take a while for anything like that to happen involving the Cardinals again, who knows.
But I'm pretty darn confident we will see a lot of dramatics in the next few years in baseball. Whether they reach the status of a Buckner type play or this year's game 6 remains to be seen. But just look at recent history. The 2001 Series was pretty classic...2002 wasn't bad, either...2003 featured the Bartman incident...2004 was the Red Sox overcoming a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees...2005 was the White Sox turn...2006, well, that was nice...2007 sucked...You get the idea.
That was the best WS in a decade and I think the second best of the last 20 years, behind 2001. If Game 7 had been better it would be on the short list of best WS of all time.
pioneer98 wrote:It may take a while for anything like that to happen involving the Cardinals again, who knows.
But I'm pretty darn confident we will see a lot of dramatics in the next few years in baseball. Whether they reach the status of a Buckner type play or this year's game 6 remains to be seen. But just look at recent history. The 2001 Series was pretty classic...2002 wasn't bad, either...2003 featured the Bartman incident...2004 was the Red Sox overcoming a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees...2005 was the White Sox turn...2006, well, that was nice...2007 sucked...You get the idea.
That was the best WS in a decade and I think the second best of the last 20 years, behind 2001. If Game 7 had been better it would be on the short list of best WS of all time.
Honestly, I think it is on the short list of best WS of all time.
I'm saying that I'm confident that we will see dramatics in the next few years. It's unlikely it will rival anything we saw last year. I'm thinking more like the dramatics we saw in the playoffs of 2002 and 2003 or 2004. Baseball playoffs seem to reach that level pretty often.
IMO, this series ranks up there with 1975, 1986, and 1991 in terms of some of the best ever.
I wonder if it'll be downplayed by the national media as time goes on as there was no big East Coast team involved like Boston or New York. Really, the 1985 series was about as good, dramatic, and controversial as the 86 series, but 85 is never mentioned as it was two midwestern teams instead of Boston vs. New York the next year.
My short list for Greatest WS of All Time would be 1912, 1924, 1975, 1991, and 2001. To me you need to go seven games and have a great Game 7 to be on that list. 2011 was an excellent Series--tense contests in Games 1, 2, and 5, a Game 6 that was beyond the impossible, and a Game 3 with a historic individual accomplishment. But Game 7 wasn't all that exciting after Texas had their little bullpen meltdown and gave the Cardinals two free runs.
It was certainly a great Series, though. Something that MLB badly needed after going on a long run of short and dull WS.
