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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Astros win the pennant. So much for momentum. Plus: Blown call? Ump asks player.
Oct 20, 2005 | Momentum, meet Roy Oswalt.
The St. Louis Cardinals had no dramatic home runs up their sleeves Wednesday night. Two nights after Albert Pujols pulled their tail feathers out of the fire by hitting a ninth-inning home run that's still in orbit, his bat was quiet. All of the Redbird bats were quiet.
Oswalt, the Houston Astros' shortest, least famous and, often, including this month, most effective starter, shut them up and shut them down. The Astros beat St. Louis 5-1 to win the first National League pennant in their 44-year history. Oswalt was the series MVP.
So much for riding the emotional wave that follows dramatic game-winning homers in the postseason. The eternal lesson of baseball: One game has little to do with the next. Or, to quote the gospel: You're only as good as your next day's starting pitcher.
On Wednesday night, the Cardinals' had a good starting pitcher going, Mark Mulder. But he didn't pitch very well after the second inning and was gone in the fifth. The Astros had a better one going, Oswalt, and he was brilliant. He took a no-hitter into the fifth, and it didn't look flukey. He gave up a run on three hits through seven.
He got some help from a bad call at second base in the fifth, which turned a bases loaded, no outs situation into first and third, one out with the Astros up 3-0.
The Cards ended up scoring their only run that inning, but even Tony La Russa and company, still steaming over some hideous umpiring in the Game 4 loss, didn't have anything to say about the umps. They just got beat, ran into a pitching buzz-saw.
The Astros get two days off before opening their first World Series Saturday in Chicago against the White Sox, who are old hands at this, having just been to the Fall Classic in 1959, and before that in 1919.
Whoever loses the Series will likely say the same thing: We just ran into a pitching buzz saw.
It's the first time since the Cardinals played the Minnesota Twins in 1987 that an entire World Series will be staged in the Central time zone. The East Coast blats may not cover it, what with several right coast teams shuffling pitching coaches around, but that's why we have the Internet.
This summer we had an NBA Finals that wasn't just all flyover, it was all defense and fundamentals. The legions of supposed fans who allegedly don't like the modern game because it's all bling-bling and me-first and one-on-one finally had a series they could sink their teeth into. They stayed away in droves.
So here we go again. All you folks who complain about the jacked-up baseballs, juiced-up sluggers and bandbox ballparks, who can't stand pinball scoreboards, 50-homer seasons being commonplace and 3.95 earned-run averages being pretty nifty, your assignment will be to tune in or shut up about the whole thing forever.
