2012: The Year of the Playoff Flameout

Baseball season has officially come to a close with a sweep of Detroit by the oddly bearded San Francisco Giants. I admit I found the Giants to be somewhat entertaining in that they all had various hairdos and beards that made them look like a team from 1978 sans the bad polyester uniforms. Other than that, the playoffs have ended what was otherwise a very compelling regular season very anticlimactically.

I loved that teams like Washington and Baltimore put together teams that went the distance into the season; both were sadly eliminated in the first round. My Braves had a solid Wild Card season, only to flame out in the weird Wild Card playoff game marred by riots (I still can't believe good Southerners would do that) and Outfield Fly Rules. Cincinnati finally put together a good team, only to likewise flameout in the in the playoffs.

The Athletics came out of no where to knock out the Texas Rangers from first place on the last game of the regular season. The Rangers just had an epic second half collapse. Sadly, the A's magic didn't last too long in the playoffs.

Detroit I think should be referred to as the Werewolves and not the Tigers. They came out of nowhere to finally put together late in the season the team that we thought they were at the beginning of the season. They diddled around for most of the season, and neither they nor the White Sox seemed to want to win the AL Central. But then Detroit decided to start howling at the moon and ended up with a Triple Crown winner and torched a good Yankees team that likewise imploded in a sweep of the ALCS, only to see the sun come up and the team revert back to its pre-Werewolf state for an otherwise mediocre San Francisco team.

The Giants liked to live dangerously, being down 2-0 in the NL Division series and then down 3-1 to the Cardinals in the NLCS, only to run the tables both times. Then only to sweep the WereTigers out of nowhere. Congrats to the Giants. They proved to be the one team that would not completely collapse.

Sadly, though, I think Baseball suffered from the year of the all around playoff flame out.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on the 'Connecticut 6'

For some weeks, I have had several friends (mostly non-Episcopalians surprisingly) wanting me to voice an opinion on this Connecticut 6 (sounds like a fleabag motel) business. If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, for lack of a better term, let me describe it as best as I understand it. There is so much spin going on (from both sides I might add) that I have been having trouble discerning fact from fiction. As I understand the situation, the Rt. Rev. Andrew Smith is the Bishop of Connecticut. Well, at least he has a pointy hat, I do not think he is particularly acting like one. Likewise, as I understand, there are Six rectors of churches (at least they have collars, but likewise are not acting like it) that have applied for DEPO oversight (i.e. another Bishop to oversee them.) The best way I know how to describe the hoohah is as follows: The Feloniously Rev. Smith is trying to defrock the Superciliously Reverend Rectors. Darth Smith claims they have abandoned communion and has shadil...
Read more

My board gaming journey, pt. I

Image
     Something a bit different today than my normal reflections. I thought I would delve a little bit more into a topic that is not necessarily theological in nature. I am a real person, and not some ethereal doctor in an ivory tower who gets to smoke a pipe and contemplate the infinite mysteries all day. So, today, I thought I would delve into one of my personal hobbies: board gaming.      Now, do not tune me out because you hear "board gaming" and immediately default in your brain to your brother overturning a table with Monopoly money flying everywhere because the game has gone on for hours and overturning the table was the only option left other than murder. Most people, including myself at one time, thought of board games as those boring or frustrating games that seem stuck in 1952. You know the usual suspects: Clue!, Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, maybe even more saccharine games like Life or Candy Land, i.e. those games that everyone owned at some p...
Read more

The History of the Football helmet

Image
NCAA.com put out an interesting editorial about the evolution of the football helmet that can be found here . This is in part due in my estimation to the current buzz (one might go so far as to describe it as hysteria) about concussions in contact sports, particularly football. I have always found this an interesting evolution. Long gone are the days of strapping on your leather helmet: In the 50's and 60's, the helmet evolved into, basically becoming a metal then hard plastic version of the leather helmet with the addition of a rudimentary face mask (which was really just a bar at first): Gradually, the helmet's face mask itself began to evolve: Combines with new space age style lightweight plastics and foams, the helmet mask ultimately became a type of full, goalie style face mask (This little number costs just under $1000 to purchase new): Ironically, being a military history major, the football helmet evolution followed the pattern of design that helmets worn...
Read more