Oooooooh LOOK
You’ve got Pest around the bases
Pest around the bases
that DRATTED Pest!!!
You pitch
and you pitch
and you pitch
and you just can’t get him out…

(sorry,  old commercial for Wisk detergent…)

From the very beginning of the playoffs, I really didn’t EXPECT him to win the WS MVP – I was just hoping he would. And he did.

5’6″ 160 pound David Eckstein actually DID win the 2006 WS MVP. It’s true. The first position player I can remember winning the MVP who didn’t get it by hitting home runs. The lil guy that could played flawless defense at short on a rainy slick field, stole bases against the AL’s best defensive catcher, hit game winning RBIs twice, scored game winning runs, took first pitches, made the pitchers foul off waaaayyy too many pitches, and even though he was hitless the first two games, just played all around great baseball. Which is what he usually does, which is why I’ve called him the Pest. He’s so little, so seemingly insignificant, so easy to disrespect. You THINK he can’t hit good pitches. You THINK he can’t POSSIBLY throw runners out from deep in the hole. You dumb enough to go there, he gonna beat you – you disbelieve me, ask Brad Lidge (that fateful Game 5 last year…)

You see, you do NOT have to be a giant sloth-slow walker/HR slugger/whiffer (or a roid user) to be a great baseball player.

The lil guy that could. My favorite non-Astro (when he isn’t playing us – then I hate him…)

Albert Who?holes was a virtual no-show for the entire playoffs. Rolen pulled himself and his bad shoulder together, in spite of errors and had a decent postseason after LaRussa sat him in Game 2 NCLS. Edmonds had a decent postseason as well, even though he didn’t go all Dan Miceli on any of the pitchers (grrrrrrrrr – I STILL haven’t forgotten that.) Belliard didn’t get on base this WS. For reasons I do NOT understand, the Tigers kept throwing Molina inside FB, which he can actually hit, and he did unusually well for such a bad hitter.

Every Cards starter pitched very well, and Jeff Weaver redeemed himself – of course, too many people will say – yeah, but if he couldn’t pitch for the Yankees, like, so??? Well, tough. He beat the guys who beat the Yanks – good enough for me. Wainwright got the job done, in spite of a few mistakes here and there.

I’m only sorry that Larry Walker wasn’t on this team to get the Ring he deserved.

No, I take that back. I am sorry that all the Yankee/Red Sox obsessed sportswriters who all sulking because their teams got beaten feel the need to be all spiteful about all their predictions being soooooooo wrong and insisting that the Cards didn’t win, the Tigers beat themselves (yeah Verducci, I’m looking at you) or insist that because the Cards season record was so poor, that in spite of standing up to the rigors of 3 weeks of postseason play, lost travel days, playing in terrible weather conditions, that the Cards “shouldn’t” have even been in the series.

BAH!

Very childish, poor losers, BAD Examples For The Children, I must say. As I’ve said before, fact is that the team that plays in the postseason may barely resemble the team that played in the beginning of the regular season, and each of the 30 ML teams has a different schedule of opponents, so comparisons to W/L records in the regular season aren’t really accurate. Those who complain bitterly that the Tigers beat the Cardinals in 3 games during interleague play and are therefore superior are suddenly forgetting that it was the same short series they are now saying isn’t meaningful.

I still say that a champion is determined by who plays the best under pressure, and the Cards certainly played the best. They had to play under the same horrible conditions the Tigers did, and you didn’t see them making stupid errors, throwing balls away, or failing to field routine FB and grounders. You saw them hitting supposedly unhittable starters and relievers (ignoring the was Kenny Rogers cheating by using pine tar controversy.) Let me put it like this – a man can boast that he has enormous long lasting erections every day, but unless he can put up when puss comes to shove, it is an empty boast.

And the Cards, unlike the Tigers, um, pulled it off…..