I have never been much of a baseball fan, but I must say that there is nothing like playoff baseball.
The parody is amazing, seeing the National League wildcard St. Louis Cardinals defeat the all-powerful Philadelphia Phillies in the first round — the same Phillies that dominated the entire season and had the best record and pitching staff.
Yet somehow, the Cardinals got past the Phillies and then proceeded to defeat the Brewers, who were also no slouch.
The Cardinals couldn’t get past the Brewers in the regular season to win the NL Central, but they meet up in the NLCS and somehow St. Louis pulls through.
And how about the Texas Rangers? They lose their ace pitcher from a year ago and still find a way to make it back to the World Series.
As boring and as drawn out as the MLB regular season is, I’m not sure if any sport has a more exciting postseason.
Just take game six of the World Series, the Rangers are only one strike away from winning the World Series before the Cardinals come back and somehow overcome several extra inning deficits.
The Cardinals simply showed that you don’t have to be the best team during the regular season. You don’t even have to be the best team in your division, but you can still make it through and win the championship.
It just shows that to win the World Series you don’t have to be the most talented, or you don’t have to have the biggest payroll, but you have to be hot — and that’s certainly what the Cardinals were.
In fact, it has been shown that being the Wild Card team might just play to your advantage.
You usually come into the playoffs in better form, plus, you are the underdog and everyone knows it — so how will the wild card team respond?
From 2002-2004 all three World Series Champions entered the playoffs as Wild Cards; Angels in 2002, Marlins in 2003 and the Red Sox in 2004.
In fact, when they Marlins won the World Series they captured the Wild Card spot because they were 10 games back of the Atlanta Braves in the NL East divisional race.
The Cardinals were the first Wild Card team to win the World Series since the Red Sox in 2004, but every year teams have to look out for whoever has the Wild Card bid.
It just feels like a waste, to be a team such as the Phillies, dominate the entire season and when the playoffs roll around you can’t even take care of a team that barely made the playoffs.
Now the Cardinals begin their biggest battle, and that is trying to re-sign future Hall of Fame first basemen Albert Pujols — that may be more of a battle then winning the World Series was itself.
Tyler Rollason is a Winder-Barrow High School graduate and mass communications major at the University of West Georgia. You can e-mail comments about this column to trollason@yahoo.com.
