SOX ARE STILL ALIVE!!

You are right Jersey, the entire 162 game season proved that the NL has lousy teams this year. Cubs couldnt stop from stubbing their toe all year, Brewers folding like a lawn chair, Dodgers went down without a fight (surprise surprise), Phillies had a valiant effort toend the year which somewhat overshadows how pathetic they were for 5 months, Mets: see Brewers, Braves couldnt cut the mustard all year they just didnt have the horses in their rotation, the Cardinals as pathetic as they were actually hung in there until the end because of all the losers around them


The Rockies and D Backs are the only 2 legit teams I can think of from the NL. The D Backs didnt seem to even know how they got to where they were. The Rockies starting pitching is not very good, but they have an amazing lineup, great team chemistry, a great bullpen and a very good all around team

[jerseybucsfan]

21 of 22 is no joke, but Colorado looked like it was running out of steam in a few of the Arizona wins. I'm not impressed with the Dbax. They have some good young players, but their starting pitching is woefully thin. The Mets underachieved, obviously, and would have given Boston a good series had they met anytime between April and August. Philly wasn't bad for five months; injuries decimated them all year (Garcia, Lieber, Madson, Howard out awhile, Utley out a month, Gordon and Myers out long stretches, etc.) That they pulled together in the end indicated their true value. But they ran into a buzzsaw, which is why Colorado and not Philly gets to lose to baseball's best team, Boston.

[Boid Fink]

ICIT has to be dying out there...lol...

I really hope to see the Sox bats destroy this completely overrated Rockies pitching and reveal just how inferior the entire national league is. 4 game sweep baby!!

[jerseybucsfan]

This series proves zilch about leagues in general. It's just about two teams. The AL was superior this year. That can't be proven or disproven in seven games. That's too small of a sample. But I believe it was you that belittled the Phils before. Well, teams change as seasons go on. The Red Sox got STRONGER as the year went on. The Mets got weaker. The Phils got stronger. The Yanks were weak, then strong, then petered out.
Just because a team is stronger in October doesn't make a league better. The NL has cut into the gap between it and the AL because a lot of good young teams have developed. This series pits a team that is on the top vs. one aspiring to be there. This may very well be Colorado's first of multiple postseason trips. The Red Sox OTOH have been through the wars. They KNOW what it takes to win this. But you can't simplify a whole league that way.
St. Louis winning last year proved NOTHING. Understand? Florida winning in 2003 did the same. A World Series is about timing and who's hot, who's healthy, etc.

Considering the Red Sox made it farther than those teams you listed, I think them winning has something to do with being better than the other teams.

[ufojoe]

Yes, Boston vs. Colorado is much more interesting.

I don't know what the deal is with the ?s. I wonder if it is because of my mac?

Anybody else have that problem? It sucks. I've gone back and fixed it before but it's
gets old real quick.

[jerseybucsfan]

Yeah four games are gonna show that an entire league is inferior, just like the Cards winning last year showed the AL was, right?
Best big game pitcher ever? Ever hear of Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax or Catfish Hunter or John Smoltz? Stick to football. The Red Sox will win because they are the better TEAM. That's all it proves. The Rockies are younger, don't have as good pitching and the Red Sox have homefield.
The Red Sox should win in 5, which will have nothing to do with how good the Dbax or Indians or Yankees or Phillies are.

[Morgan]

You think you could throw a few more "?  ?   ? ?    ? ? ?   ? ? ?  ? ?  " into that article for us?

[Morgan]

Actually, it probably is best for the BoSox to be in the Series. Otherwise, it might have been a pretty boring one with the Rockies-Indians.  I've lost interest in MLB since the strike so many years ago - but I have been following the playoffs - and will likely watch the series every night with some interest.

[ufojoe]

Massive article on Manny here:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/23/070423fa_fact_mcgrath

Both good and bad. Well, not so much good besides his hitting prowess. The guy hasn't
given any $$$ to the school where he started out. Nice.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/23/070423fa_fact_mcgrath

When I asked his teammate David Ortiz, himself a borderline folk hero, how he would describe Ramirez, he replied, “As a crazy motherf***er.� Then he pointed at my notebook and said, “You can write it down just like that: ‘David Ortiz says Manny is a crazy motherf***er.’ That guy, he’s in his own world, on his own planet. Totally different human being than everyone else.� Ortiz is not alone in emphasizing that Ramirez’s originality resonates at the level of species. Another teammate, Julian Tavarez, recently told a reporter from the Boston Herald, “There’s a bunch of humans out here, but to Manny, he’s the only human.�
 
* * * * *

wondered why the Red Sox and their fans find Ramirez so elusive. “This guy calls me up at least five times a week just to say hello,� he said. “He calls me up for Thanksgiving. Knows my wife’s Jewish—he called her up for Hanukkah. Around Christmas, I said, ‘You gain any weight?’ He says, ‘Yeah, a few pounds. Why don’t you come and run with me?’ He wants me to go down to his mother’s house and eat dinner when I go down to Florida. I mean, that’s the kind of guy he is. Manny would love just to come here and sit. He’d hang out with my group.�

* * * * *

They say, ‘Manny being Manny,’ but we used to say, ‘That’s Manny,’ � Steve Mandl, the baseball coach at George Washington High School, on Audubon Avenue at 193rd Street, said recently, as he stood sentry by the locker-room door before a midmorning gym class. “It wasn’t crazy stuff—it’s just that he didn’t really care about anything other than playing. Even team pictures—it wasn’t important to him. You had to drag him by the hair. But if you said we had a game at three o’clock he’d, like, want to sit out there at seven o’clock in the morning, waiting.�

* * * * *

Once it was clear that he’d finally made it, the entire Ramirez family moved with Manny to a suburb of Cleveland, and eventually to Florida, and stopped returning to Washington Heights. “We’d like him to help the program out, which he doesn’t, unfortunately,� Mandl said. “The kids, every day, it’s ‘Why doesn’t Manny do this? Why doesn’t Manny do that?’ We’d like to put lights on the field.�

[TURBO]

that is just manny being an a-hole...

[TURBO]

Now we have to watch "ManRam" for another series. Hope some Rockies pitcher throws some chin music early on in the series.

I'd rather he just get hit every time he steps to the plate, now THAT would be worth watching.

[Morgan]

Now we have to watch "ManRam" for another series. Hope some Rockies pitcher throws some chin music early on in the series.

[TURBO]

if there was one team in MLB that I didn't want in the world series, it was the frickin' red sox.

GO ROCKIES!