King Kaufman's Sports Daily
World Series preview: Pitching can only do so much. The Cardinals and Red Sox will settle this thing with baseball bats. Plus: NFL Week 7 picks.
Oct. 22, 2004 | You can only keep the big bats of the St. Louis Cardinals down for so long, even if you throw a future Hall of Famer at them. The Houston Astros learned that in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series Thursday night when the Cards broke through against Roger Clemens in the sixth inning for the three-run rally that sent them to the World Series.
A run-scoring double by Albert Pujols tied a 2-1 game and a two-run homer by Scott Rolen put St. Louis ahead and hung the loss on Clemens.
The Boston Red Sox have two possible Hall of Famers to throw at the Cardinals, Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez, though neither is pitching at his best. They're likely to learn the same lesson.
The good news for the Sox: You can't keep their big bats down indefinitely either. Ask Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, last seen issuing gracious press releases congratulating Boston for its American League Championship Series win and summoning his underlings to Tampa for closed-door meetings with special assistant "Tiny" and his trusty rubber hose.
The Cardinals and Red Sox, the highest scoring teams in each league, begin the World Series Saturday night in Boston.
Baseball fans have a lot to be thankful for in yet another thrilling postseason. Both league championship series were seesaw affairs that went seven games, the ALCS going off the charts when the Red Sox became the first major league team ever to lose the first three games of a seven-game series and then win four straight.
The Cards, in a super-secret NLCS played under cover of the Red Sox and Yankees, won the first two against the Astros, lost three straight, then won the last two, not a historic comeback but one that in any other week would have at least been notable. Two of the division series were pretty good too, Yankees-Twins and Astros-Braves.
But is there any greater relief to anyone who isn't an Astros fan than not having to sit through nine days of nonsensical media prattling about how a Red Sox-Astros World Series is some kind of metaphor for the presidential race? The Red Sox and Astros are each from the home state of one of the candidates, you see. Thank the baseball gods that one didn't come to pass.
Instead stay tuned for a weeklong orgy of the story line of Red Sox as plucky, scrappy underdogs. This may have slipped by unnoticed, so I'll clue you in: The Red Sox haven't won the World Series since 1918, when they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for three magic beans and a 78 recording of "Tea for Two."
They got off the deck to conquer their arch-nemeses, the Yankees, and now they must face the National League version of the Team They Just Can't Beat, the Cardinals, storied franchise and nine-time champions, against whom the Sox are winless in the Fall Classic.
Next page: The Red Sox don't really fit the bill as plucky overachievers