Cinderella, Goliath and other Series myths

With the Giants and Angels set to meet in the Fall Classic, it's time for Fox TV and other pundits to manufacture drama.

By King Kaufman

Oct 19, 2002 | The baseball postseason is a myth-making enterprise, both in the sense of the legends that sustain the game and the showbiz and blather that turn the national pastime into a Very Special Episode every year about this time.

Without the World Series, the myth of Babe Ruth would be the story of a real good baseball player, not the Bunyanesque legend of a man who transcended sports. Willie Mays has always said he made better catches than the one he made in the 1954 World Series, but the idea of Willie Mays, Greatest Center Fielder of All Time, is built around that one moment. Everything else he ever did is supporting evidence.

There's one such myth at play in the 2002 World Series between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants, which opens Saturday night at Edison Field in Anaheim. Barry Bonds, who has turned a stellar career into one for the ages with his last two eye-popping seasons, and who until this season had a history of failure in the playoffs, gets a chance to write a crucial chapter in his myth by playing in the World Series for the first time. With a few big hits, he'll make people forget forever his earlier failures. If he bombs, he'll magnify those earlier shortcomings.

There are more myths of the other stripe, and this year features an old war horse, the Cinderella team, coming out of nowhere. That would be the Anaheim Angels, who are a Cinderella because their win over the New York Yankees was an upset.

Only it wasn't an upset. After they stumbled out of the gate by going 6-14, the Angels were the best team in baseball over the next 142 games, or 88 percent of the season, and they did this while playing in the toughest division, the American League West, with the Oakland A's and Seattle Mariners, good teams they had to play a total of 39 times. The Yankees played 19 games against the Boston Red Sox, who had the same record as the Mariners, but they also played 18 against the hideous Tampa Bay Devil Rays, whom the Angels got to play only nine times.

So I know what you're saying: You picked the Yanks to win in four, genius. Yes, but that's because I figured the Yankees would work their postseason mojo on the Angels -- that they would get better in the playoffs than they had been in the season, as they've done every year of their current championship run except 1998, when they were a juggernaut from Opening Day on. I was wrong. That didn't happen. But that doesn't mean the Angels are some sort of out-of-nowhere club, just because most of the typing classes, yours truly included, underestimated their ability to make the series go according to form.

On paper, the Angels were better than the Yankees this year. A lot of teams better than the Yankees go into playoff series against them and lose. The Angels avoided that fate.

MYTH: David Eckstein, Great Player!

Eckstein is a singles-hitting utility infielder type, a pesky leadoff guy who, despite having little range and a weak arm, is the Angels' shortstop. He's also 5-foot-8 and a classic overachiever. You know, they said he was too small in high school, they said he was too small in college ... But little David showed 'em!

TV people love people like Eckstein, especially when they're energetic and bright-eyed, which plays well on the tube, and kind of self-effacing and humble, all true of our Davey, who, as Fox's announcers have pointed out, has a very appropriate front name, as in "and Goliath."

Fox is so invested in the myth of David Eckstein, Great Player! that its announcers are willing to say things that are patently untrue to defend it. In Game 3 of the American League Championship Series against the Minnesota Twins, Eckstein took a relay throw in shallow left field and fired toward home to try to stop Dustan Mohr from scoring the tying run. The throw dribbled along the infield and was cut off. Watching the replay, Fox's Steve Lyons said something like, "There's one of the rare occasions where Eckstein's weak arm actually hurts you."

Right, Steve. Having a weak arm at shortstop is usually no problem. It's only the most important defensive position on the field, and how often does a shortstop have to make a long throw in a hurry from, say, the hole to, oh, first base? Maybe twice a game? For Eckstein it's probably only once because he has such little range, he won't reach that other grounder. Still, that's the equivalent of 54 innings' worth of outs, or about as many as your closer is responsible for.

There's apparently no room for nuance on TV. It's not possible to say: "That Eckstein doesn't hit much, doesn't field much, but the Angels sure do like him. They think he gives them a big lift, that he's their spark plug. It's a debatable point, but boy, he's fun to watch and likable as hell."

I wonder why that is, but then that question will have to wait for a "questions about the World Series" article.

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