In baseball, you never know who the hero will be. Sure, over the course of the season, Josh Hamilton is going to be the hero many times for the Rangers, but he could go 0-4 and somebody else could come up big and help the Rangers win. I was reminded of this last night watching the Dodgers. They were down 2-1 with the bases loaded. Tony Gwynn Jr. (a career .247 hitter with 83 RBIs in 531 career games) came up as a pinch hitter. He hit a three run triple and came out of the game once the Dodgers went back into the field. The Dodgers never looked back. In basketball, a role player might hit a big shot, but he's not going to be the most important player on the court. Of the 17 half innings played last night, Gwynn played in one of them and was the most important player in the game. I think that's really cool. Then there's the fact that the starting pitcher changes every day. I'd say the starting pitcher is just as important as a quarterback in football and imagine if a football team had a five man quarterback rotation.
Check out the last ten World Series MVPs. Right now, none of those guys are Hall of Famers. Ramirez would be if he was clean and maybe Hamels or Freese get there, but they have a ton of work to do. Maybe some of you will argue for Renteria and my response to that is that it's not the Hall of Very Good. Of the last fourteen Super Bowl MVPs, I think all but three of them (Dexter Jackson, Deion Branch, and Santonio Holmes) will be in the Hall of Fame (you might not love Hines Ward, but I think his numbers will get him in the Hall of Fame, but I could be wrong). And if you want to check out the NBA Finals MVPs, it's hard to find anybody that's not a Hall of Famer. I love football and basketball, but I love the fact that anybody can be a hero in baseball.
Anyway, I'll be at the Orioles game on Saturday. I'll miss Game 7 for the Rangers. I can live with that because it's only the second round. Hopefully they'll win and I won't miss another playoff game. It would also be Game 7 for the Celtics. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. Go Celtics! Go Rangers!
I do like that about baseball. Because you're so confined by the rules of the lineup/ substitutions, the pivotal moment of the game falls randomly onto 1 of the 9 guys, whereas the Zombies can just hand the ball to Durant or Westbrook every time on the last possession of a tied game. Even in football, you design the play to go to your best player, and the quarterback and RB get to touch it automatically with no real chance for the defense to stop them.
ReplyDeleteIt's equally interesting from the pitching/defense perspective, where you can't just say "oh Matt Kemp is up, let's bring in our best pitcher to face him," or bring in the same lefty every time he's up to bat.
Matt Kemp is a righty, but it's a good point. Baseball is so situational and you can't anticiipate those situations. In basketball especially, you can. Before the game even starts, you probably know what you're going to do if you're down two with less than a minute to play. You can't anticipate leading by a run in the eighth with the number seven hitter coming up with two men on base or whatever.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Kevin Garnett for carrying the Celtics to victory tonight so I don't have to worry about Game 7 while I'm in Baltimore on Saturday night. I'll miss Game 1 of Celtics-76ers, but no big deal. I still have to worry about the Rangers, of course.