Gautam Mukunda wrote:
I'm lucky to have a job. The
market just _sucks_.
Yes, I feel lucky that my wife and I both have relatively secure jobs.
Let's see, the postseason, and the regular season too
:-) I was very disappointed when Oakland lost, of
course. It was, I think, symptomatic of the one thing
that Billy Beane hasn't been able to deal with, and
one of the major reasons for the Yankee's continued
success in the postseason - the Yankee's money buys
better coaching and better scouting. The As were
simply poorly coached - witness Jeremy Giambi's
memorable failure to slide last year.
I agree. I think that Howe made some questionable discussions this time
- why not set up your rotation so that both your lefties get two starts
against a team that performs poorly against southpaws, for starters.
I'm very relived that Beane didn't jump ship.
Let none of
that take away from the Angels' remarkable
achievement, however. They were an excellent team and
absolutely deserved to win the World Series - in no
way do they resemble the fluke Marlins of 1997. It
was a fun World Series, on the whole - not as good as
2001, but good nonetheless. If the owners would stop
talking down baseball and actually _market the sport_
then something like that will be wonderful indeed.
The Angels are a good team, well coached, and did deserve to win. Some
of the best games down the stretch were the two A's - Angels series.
Baseball at its best. I had trouble choosing a team to route for in the
Series. The Giants are local, of course, but there's always a rivalry
between A's and Giants fans, so that made it hard. Then there's the
fact that the Angels are essentially an L.A. team and its hard to route
for anything from L.A. (no offense 8^) ) Eventually I found myself
pulling for the Giants, but most of all I wanted for them to pitch to Bonds.
The other major takeaway from both the season and the
postseason is, of course, that Barry Bonds is not a
human being. He is either the best or the second best
baseball player of all time, I think. The argument
for him being the best, of course, rests on the fact
that Babe Ruth played against a much lower level of
competition generally, and specifically one that
lacked African-American players (like, of course,
Barry Bonds). I find those arguments to be almost,
but not entirely, persuasive, so I'm not sure where I
come down on that stance. In either case, he's a
marvel to watch and we should count ourselves lucky to
be seeing him play.
Barry Bonds, Jerry Rice, Michael Jorden, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky:
it's a great time to be a sports fan.
My final comment before I head back to work - while
the Angels were totally a deserving team, they also
had pretty much every player have a career year _the
same year_ - something that I do not think will happen
next year. The As will win the West again next year -
and hopefully the World Series, although I actually
think Boston might just give them a run for their
money :-)
We'll see. I think our young pitchers really proved themselves this
year. I hope they can move Durham to CF and keep him on board. The
rookie, Ellis, is an exciting player, very mature for his years, I''m
looking forward to seeing him improve in 2003. I don't think that the
Angels are going to go away though, they've got an exciting bunch of
young players down there as well. Seattle, on the other hand may go
away - with aging stars, a questionable rotation and no Pinnella I'm
guessing they'll have an off year.
That's about it. I hope that all is well with
everyone. I look forward to hearing from all of you.
Thanks for the update - and the titles. Good to hear from you again.
Doug
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