COLUMN California Dreamin'

Author: D. Lorenzo Prepas

Now I know most people from the East Coast are ecstatic that the baseball season is finished and football is in full swing, but I just had to write something about just how incredible this World Series was. The Angels erased over 40 years of futility and suffering by winning one of the most exciting World Series in recent history. And yes, I am an Angels fan, so there will obviously be some bias here and there. But before I go on, I'd like to address how annoyed I was when everyone claimed they could care less about who won this year. Bottom line, if you consider yourself a baseball fan (and I know all those Red Sox fans at this school do), you should have been enthralled by it. I think people living east of the Hudson forget that there are more teams in baseball besides the Yankees and Red Sox. No offense Red Sox fans, but it does not say much when all you really care about is watching the Yankees lose.
The Yankees did not choke when they lost to the Angels. Neither did the Giants or Twins. The Angels just played the kind of baseball that I thought no team in this modern era was capable of. I mean, seriously, if you talk to any of those guys they will tell you how unselfish every player was. They battled every bat for 162 games and the postseason. To keep up that kind of intensity and focus is nothing short of incredible. I am sure many teams will try to copy Scosscia's philosophy; but to be honest it probably won't work. The Angels are an anomaly to modern day baseball, where players care more about individual statistics and salaries than ever before. Old school fans who complain about the state of the game and the domination of the long ball have to love that the Angels won instead of the Giants.
These teams were polar opposites of each other. The Angles are comprised of mostly players brought up through their own system while the Giants starting lineup and pitching is mostly all free agents and "mercenaries" brought over mid-season in the style that mad the Yankees so despised these past couple of years. Oh yeah, and they have Bonds, whose talent and performance were so ridiculous I still cannot fathom it. The guy had an on base percentage of over .700, a batting average of .471 and hit four homers. Absurd. Yet people will not remember this World Series for him and rightly so. The Angels overcame the biggest deficit any team facing elimination in the World Series ever had when they came back to win game six. And as I sit here staring at my ticket stub from that game, I still have to remind myself that the Angels won the World Series. And in parting, I just want to thank the Red Sox for releasing David Eckstein two years ago. Oh yeah.