(Charles Krupa/AP)
Friday night at work, a co-worker/Cubs fan tried messing with me saying he heard on the radio that he who shall not be named could be in line to start Game 1 of the World Series today. I laughed in his face.
Now, it’s official: Anthony Reyes will start.
Worried? Don’t be. Disregard his mediocre regular season. Throw out his crappy NLCS start. I think this is the perfect setup for the Reyes boy.
Does that make me crazy? Possibly. But think about it: There’s no pressure on the kid. Nobody expects the Cardinals to win, so he needn’t worry about the burden of high expectations. He can just go out there and deal.
Plus, he did pretty OK against that one American League team that had never seen him before.
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Jeff Weaver is in line to start Game 2 on Sunday.
He’s one of the several “story lines” that Fox will flog mercilessly. Once upon a time, he was considered a future ace by the Tigers, who ended up trading him in 2002 to the Yankees, a deal that eventually netted the Tigers their Game 4 starter, Jeremy Bonderman.
I don’t know the conditions under which he left Detroit back then. But it seems that today, Todd Jones has little regard for Weaver:
There’s no love lost here that he’s gone.
At least Weaver was an adult about it, basically ignoring Jones and expressing his happiness for his former teammates and the city of Detroit:
They were here for the worst of times, and now they get to see the best of times.
I’ve never been fond of trash-talk. At best, it’s juvenile. At worst, it’s disrespectful. But Todd Jones is the straight-shooting type. He’ll tell you how he feels, and I guess I have to respect him for that. It still doesn’t make it right.
Props to Weaver for not fanning the flames through the media. The best way to tell Jones to go scratch would be to shut down the Tigers in Game 2.
Then Jones might have a legitimate reason for saying there’s no love lost.
October 21, 2006 at 1:28 pm
“Nobody expects the Cardinals to win.”
I really feel that says it all about our postseason – we’ve never had the burden of the media pressure (and everyone else’s for that matter) in this postseason until game 6 of the NLCS. As you may’ve noticed, our bats went ice cold, and if it weren’t for an amazing pitching performance by Jeff Suppan and a majestic swing of the bat by Yadi, we may’ve lost both game because we felt pressure.
We can play the “no pressure” card again in the WS, at least until we’re in a position that makes everyone say, “they should win this thing now.”
October 22, 2006 at 2:15 am
[...] I thought starting Game 1 was a great situation for Reyes because the rook would be under little pressure. I don’t want to say he proved me right, but… [...]
October 22, 2006 at 4:22 pm
40 percent solution…
Viva El Birdos, indeed. in 1968, the real El Birdos — the cardinal team after which this blog is named…