Off Season

It is only two days till Christmas (and one day till the end of Hanukkah), and my mood is beginning to brighten. I've completed my holiday obligations, save for a few seasonal greeting cards I owe, and can start to concentrate on what I wish to get for myself. The onslaught of horrific Christmas music, so aurally demoralizing, should subside in a few days, like my cold sore. I used to sucumb to Holiday depression that would caused me to run out and screen the most depressing film out there. That urge has subsided although I will be viewing "Children of Men" tomorrow at the WGA, and that has been heralded as a fine dystopian vision. Ought to be cool.

So what better thing to do with my leisure time late in the year than to review the culmination of the baseball season? I have not yet had my say, and though I barely remember who it was that won the World Series (the Cardinals, I think), I can't bid farewell to this year without a brief commentary, even if it ensues Roger Angell's classic annual November column by six weeks.

The Cardinals' last month was suffused in irony. They limped--or rather, crawled pathetically--into the play-offs after a nearly epic collapse that almost permitted the Astros to pass them by with their typical late-season surge. They were saved, of course, by a clutch homer by Albert Pujols on the last weekend. Then they ate some Wheaties and regained their composure to defeat a mediocre San Diego club. Finally they met the Mets, the best team in the NL all year, but a team whose top two pitchers were on the bench with injuries. The Mets-Cardinal series was the only truly entertaining match-up in October, and provided an example of how mercurial the Baseball Gods could be. The finale of the seven-game set provided a classic moment when Met left fielder Endy Chavez robbed Scott Rolen of a two-run homer with an over-the-wall reach that defied gravity and most contortionists. Then he turned it into a double play. The Mets fans roared--here was a Mays-like gem that would live in replays forever. But in the end it meant nothing, as the Cards held on and won in the ninth with a homer by flyweight Yadier Molina (a perfect Aaron Boone type). Chavez's heroics went for naught.

The double irony is that the Cardinals lost the pennant in 2005 after a similarly heroic moment when Pujols saved them with a late-inning home run. And all those Cardinal teams of the past decade, including the one that lost the NLCS to the Mets in 2000, were superior to this one. But the degree of chance that factors into a short series was favorable to them this year, and they went on to beat the Tigers in five games and become the Team with the Worst Record Ever to win the World Series. The Series itself was a literal Comedy of Errors, as the hot-and-cold Tigers, overrated after they squelched the Yanks and the As, totally imploded with one ludicrous overthrow after the other, rendering the event more like the Little League World Series, or worse, a Grapefruit League game in early March. They were almost Black Sox-like in their haplessness. Hmm.

What the Cardinals did do, which no other team could approach, was display great resiliency in game situations. Every time their opponent scored, it seemed, the Cards bounced right back in the next half-inning to answer. It was that kind of heart that allowed them to prevail against the more talented Mets, and for their clutch performance they deserved the title.

The Yankess were, of course, a tremendous disappointment again. Their powerful hitters fell silent after a brief flurry that gave them a first-game victory. Then The Greatest Lineup Ever went totally moribund. You'd expect that from Arod, whose batting average in Yankee post-season games hovers around .050. But what about Sheffield, and Giambi, and Abreu, and Cano? Jees. And Randy Johnson failed again in the one role for which he was summoned, to overpower the opposition in October as he did against the Yankees in 1995 and 2001. I should, of course, give the Tiger pitching staff and that lame Kenny Rogers some credit, though one wonders whether the Gambler cheated against the Yankees after it was revealed that he had some suspect smudges on his fingers when he started Game 2 of the World Series.

My last memory of the post-season is the most comical. It was a play in the first game of the NLDS between the Dodgers and the Mets, and saw two slow-footed Dodgers being erased at the plate after a clutch double that should have put L.A. in the driver's seat. The double/double-play kiboshed the rally and any momentum the Dodgers might have gained by winning the opener in New York. I'm glad I never turned into a Dodger fan.