On the same day that we sports heads see Emitt Smith pass the almighty Walter Payton as the NFL's leader in career yards rushing, The Anaheim Angels are your world champions of baseball. They beat the San Francisco Giants in the World Series this year in what turned out to be a very excellent series. The sportswriters and sportscasters all had their eyes on one person, Barry Bonds. It seemed like Barry was running for president the amount of press he was getting. While Barry is an amazing player, he is not a team. Good for him that he hit 8 out of the Giants' 14 home runs in the series, the Anaheim Angels only needed half as many to win the series.
This was a good series for two reasons in my book. The first reason is that it went to a game 7, and game 7s are cool. The second reason is that the two teams denoted two very different baseball styles. The Giants were a big hit team. With Bonds, Jeff Kent, and Benito Santiago in thier line-up, the Giants hit a lot of longballs in the season, and in the post season. The Angles were a baseball team that could manufacture runs. Their guys could get on base and cause trouble. The Angel's also had a team batting average of .310, about 29 points better than that of the Giants.
The score of Game 7 was 4-1, in favor of Anaheim, of course. John Lackey was the first rookie to pitch the win in a game 7 of a world series since 1909. Angel's third baseman, Troy Glaus, was the winner of the MVP trophy, although an argument could be made for several of his teammates. One person especially, would be who the Anaheim fans are calling K-Rod, and his first name starts with an F. Francisco Rodriguez, a 20 year old out of Caracas, Venezuela, pitched 18.2 innings in the post season and marked up 28 strike-outs and shined as an excellent relief pitcher, marking up only 4 earned runs in the post season.
And where's the love for the Rally Monkey? I think that lil guy should be the Angel's MVP as he did turn things around several times in the postseason. I wonder if the Boston Red Sox want a Rally animal; I think we need one. Besides, I wouldn't mind wearing the mascot suit. I could be the Rally Otter, or something.
But now baseball is over. Another season is in the can, and I can cry because the BoSox, with their second highest payrole in baseball didn't make anything. Atleast the Yankees didn't win. Oh, And for all you people from Cleveland, Kenny Lofton was at the plate, with 2 outs in the top of the ninth inning. A man was on second, and another on first base. Lofton takes the Troy Percival pitch and slams it, high.....deep.... but not deep enough, as it's caught by the centerfielder. Sorry Willie Mays Hayes, maybe next year :^P