Archive for the ‘World Series’ Category

Ed. Note: Though it may seem as though the actual baseball season ended half a lifetime ago, it didn’t! The World Series ended scant days ago. As the cold and snow sets deep into our bones, let Craig Robinson’s ever-important “information-based graphic art” take your mind back to the days when baseball was still played an life retained meaning.

You may remember this format when Craig used it to visually represent Felix Hernandez’s perfect game. It was awesome then and remains awesome now. Enjoy! Click here for an even more enormous version.

I’d like to pretend that Major League Baseball doesn’t like it when the San Francisco Giants play in the World Series, but I’m pretty sure that Major League Baseball doesn’t care as much about television ratings for the World Series as a great many others might. Less than a month after new television deals with ESPN, FOX and TBS were announced, the 2012 World Series pulled in the worst television ratings since such things were measured.

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Because it wouldn’t be a World Series victory without the fine folks from Next Media Animation giving us their interpretation of the events that transpired. And accordingly, those events are sensationally awesome.

As the dying medium with which news is delivered continues its decline into irrelevance, the last part of a newspaper to go gently into the good night will be the iconic status which we give to a front page after something on a large stage occurs.

Here are the front pages from newspapers across California.

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There is no doubt that the Giants clamped down on the Tigers during the World Series, producing one of the more lopsided Fall Classics in modern memory. Pablo Sandoval single-handedly demolished the Giants in Game 1, the Tigers were held scoreless in the middle games, and Giants starters posted an ERA of 1.42 in 25 1/3 innings.

But as great as the Giants played, and bad as it was for the Tigers, it could have been even worse.  These are most lopsided World Series in history:

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About an hour or so before Game Four of the World Series, I got hit by a car. I was walking across the street, and a vehicle rolled through a stop sign, and turned right into me. The driver wasn’t going very fast, but the impact was great enough to knock me down. My first thought was that I wouldn’t be able to jump up and down if the San Francisco Giants won the game, which is telling, not only of my poorly ranked priorities, but also the seriousness of the collision.

Nonetheless, I probably should’ve gone to the hospital, but I toughed it out so that I wouldn’t miss my favorite team winning the World Series. The first few innings were fine, but as my right knee began to stiffen up and the dull pain became a little bit more throbbing, I wondered if I might have made a mistake. By the bottom of the ninth, I felt like Omar Infante looked after getting hit in the hand by a pitch from Santiago Cassila.

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The Giants are lucky. They are getting all the breaks and the snake bitten Tigers can’t do anything right. That seems to be the overriding emotion of the World Series up the this point.

While no single baseball game or seven game series is without an enormous amount of variance and random chance, the Giants are often the authors of their own good fortune. Not to mention the helping hand the Tigers provide. The Giants are indeed lucky that Jim Leyland insists on hitting Quintin Berry second. The Giants are also lucky enough to get to face the Tigers beleaguered bullpen. Getting a great start from Barry Zito while Justin Verlander lays an egg (relatively) is pretty much as lucky as it gets but the Giants, like it or lump it, are good.

San Francisco is a good team getting good pitching and playing tremendous defense facing a team providing little in the way of resistance at the plate. All that good pitching and great defense and enough hitting to counteract the “none” offense of the Tigers gives the Giants a commanding 3-0 series lead after a second consecutive shutout, beating Detroit 2-0.

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