The beauty of baseball is that it’s unpredictable. Or as baseball scholar Yogi Berra once said, “In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”
Yogi was right. The baseball experts predicted the Phillies were a lock to win it all. They were wrong. The Cardinals picked that lock and showed they are the better team. The experts predicted the Red Sox would be American League champs. Instead they became American League chumps. Click here to see how many pundits punted on their predictions:
I must confess I fell for it. At the beginning of the season, I truly believed the Red Sox and Phillies would meet in the World Series. I mean after all, the Phillies had assembled one of the greatest rotations in baseball with Halladay, Hamels, Oswalt and Lee, plus a kid named Vance Worley from Sacramento’s McClatchy High School, who won 11 games for Philadelphia this year. The Phillies were loaded for bear, but the Cardinals were hungrier. Who knew?
In the American League, the Red Sox featured a powerful lineup with David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia and Adrian Gonzalez leading the way. Boston’s pitching was superb on paper: Beckett, Buchholz, Lackey and Lester plus Wakefield – with Papelbon the fireman to save the day. Who could know that injuries would make the names on the roster look like invisible ink? Or as Yogi Berra put it, “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.”
So now that the Red Sox and Phillies are history – and my favorite team, the Yankees are toast – it’s time to predict who will win the World Series. I’ve decided I’m done making predictions. Instead I will root for two teams that have never captured the flag: the Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers. Both have goose eggs when it comes to World Series Championships, so why not crown a new winner this year, just for fun? While the “smart money” is probably on the Tigers and Cardinals – I’ll just root with my heart for the two underdogs (I mean after all the Brewers have a losing record on the road). But the Brewers are exciting to watch with Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun, while the Rangers have great players in Josh Hamilton and Michael Young. Plus Ron Washington is a great manager who is very under-rated.
For a look at previous World Series Champions, click here:
While the Yankees lead the way with 27 Championships, maybe this year we’ll have a new winner. After all, as Yogi once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
