SportsDystopia

It wasn’t supposed to go like this, according to the experts.  The American League has been the real senior circuit these last few years, they said.  The Phillies have been sitting home for a week rusting while Tampa Bay was showing it’s mettle in closing out the Red Sox, they said.  ESPN’s baseball writers nearly unanimously picked the Rays to win the series before it began, and most of them predicted it to only last 4 or 5 games.

Well, after last night’s 10-2 stomp, the Phillies lead the World Series 3 games to 1.

If there’s one way in which sportswriters are like politicians, it’s that they never admit a mistake.  Ever.  It’s endlessly galling to watch themes and trends develop through the last weeks of the season and through October, then to see the so-called experts ignore these trends when making their predictions.

Case in point: Cole Hamels.  The Phillies’ ace had looked sharp in 12 of his previous 13 starts, and entering the World Series had been the postseason’s most reliable pitcher with a 3-0 record and 1.23 ERA.    After he shut down Tampa Bay in the opener, Hamels improved to 4-0, and had clearly been the best pitcher in baseball over the whole of two months. But he still hadn’t earned the respect of the connoisseurs of the conventional wisdom over at the worldwide leader in sports.  Jayson Stark was only impressed enough to call him “arguably the best starting pitcher on either team in this world series”.  At least Stark can be given credit for picking Philly to win the series.

Hamels will start game 5 tonight, and he’s the reason the Rays have little chance of getting back into this series.  Scott Kazmir will take the hill for Tampa, and is hoping to improve on his game 1 loss to Hamels.

When handicapping the series, I felt that the Phillies had 3 clear advantages over Tampa Bay that were more or less ignored by the ESPN team when they made their Rays predictions.  First, I felt Cole Hamels at this point was not “arguably” the best pitcher in the series, but the best pitcher in baseball and as close to a guarantee to win any game he started as you were going to get.  Second, in spite of the way the Rays’ bats had gotten hot in games 3, 4 and 5 of the LCS, they’re not typically a big scoring team.  They’ve usually needed to manufacture runs with speed, baserunning, and timely hitting.  The Phillies lineup is nearly as fast, deeper and more powerful (in spite of the jaw-dropping run BJ Upton has been on).  Third, I felt that in Ryan Madsen and Brad Lidge, the Phils had the obvious edge on the back end of the bullpen.

Any of the other storylines were superfluous to what was going to happen on the field.  The Rays’ momentum and emotional high didn’t matter, because they were playing a new team.  And I sincerely believed that Hamels on the mound in game 1 cancelled out any supposed rust factor that could have threatened the Phillies.

He’s on one of those great postseason pitching runs, where watching brings a palpable sense that the man on the mound will not be beaten, under any circumstances.  I get the same feeling watching Hamels that I did watching Josh Beckett in his runs with Boston and Florida, the same feeling that improbably came from Jose Contreras in 2005, and that Randy Mullet and Curt Sock gave in 2001.

(I’m going to refer to Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling that way from now on, I think the names ‘Randy Mullet and Curt Sock’ sound like they could be on the roster for the next Bases Loaded video game.  I always enjoyed the way the Nintendo game used random nouns for players’ last names like PASTE, BAY, or AGUA.  It was rightfully overlooked for RBI Baseball, but did feature several ahead of their time joys, like the unique TV pitching view, irritable players who would charge the mound when plunked to incite a bench clearing brawl, and a talking umpire named Yuk who’s dispassionate “…strike…” and disgusted “BALL!” calls made pitching against the computer a grueling battle of willpower.)

In any case, look for Hamels to get his 5th win tonight and become a hero for the rest of his life in Philadelphia, which hasn’t hoisted a trophy since 83′, the days of Dr. J and Moses Malone.  You think getting a free taco ’s nice?  Hamels is about to get 50 years of free cheesesteaks, any time he wants one.

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