World Series Game One

[Box Score]

[C70 At the Bat] [Dallas Morning News] [ESPN Dallas]

I turned the game on last night for a while because baseball history was being made. Everyone remembers a moment from game one of every World Series.

For me, that moment was finding out that Arthur Rhodes was being paid a measly $1,000 dollars by the St. Louis Cardinals and $1.1 million by the Texas Rangers. The same Arthur Rhodes who we hung with in the Diamond Club in Cincinnati. The same Arthur “Bad Man” Rhodes who I told you the Reds would suffer a swoon from the loss of.

Twenty year Major League career, and now here he protecting a one run lead with two down in the 8th inning and Josh Hamilton at the plate. His stuff looked the same to me as it always has–call me crazy but it did. He got Josh Hamilton to fist one into center and he walked off the field in a World Series game for the first time in his life. He would get credit for the hold and I would wonder exactly why the Rangers wouldn’t have hung onto a left-handed lethal weapon like this. Why is a guy like this expendable at any point on a team like the Rangers? Especially when think about the principle that you’re paying his salary to beat you.

The Cardinals kept rolling and I would like to say I was surprised. But I really wasn’t. They’re probably going to win this series and continue to wreck everything I have in the way of predictions this postseason. I would almost bet my life that the Rangers win tonight in St. Louis and even this series at 1-1 heading back to Texas.

I think we’re all having a hard time processing what these Cardinals are. They’re a team with one big time pitcher, a great bullpen, and guys like Allen Craig and Lance Berkman are getting big hits to win the game. They’re built around the greatest player of our generation and a lot of patient hitters who have been taught to let the game come to them instead of being built on trying to make something happen. And we’re talking about this because it’s really working.