World Series Game 4: No mas
posted in St. Louis Cardinals, World Series |St. Louis 5. Detroit 4.
I’d like to say there’s some reason to be optimistic. But really, there’s not. The Cardinals just seem to be playing with much more poise, and the Tigers seem to have all but lost any of that cool poise we saw most of the season. I just don’t see them coming back to win the World Series from a 3-1 deficit and no poise.
When we talk about stats, and we pretend there’s no such thing as clutch because it varies from year to year, it sounds good. It sounds logical. It sounds right. But it also sounds like playing the game inside a microchip. The guys playing the game for real in the Detroit uniform are falling short of what we’ve come to expect of them, and they’re doing it in ways we never could have imagined. Mental mistakes. Physical mistakes. Sure, some of it was forced by St. Louis, some was forced by the playing conditions (which were the same for both teams), and some was just random luck of the baseball going to an inch too far or not far enough. But maybe it’s also a sign of being a young team on a very big stage no one expected them to reach.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am. I just don’t see any reason to believe this is going to be a repeat of 1968 with three straight victories. Sure, anything is possible. But probable? No.
Maybe I’ll have something more to say tomorrow. Tonight, I have nothing else to add.