World Series

The St Louis Cardinals made it to the World Series, where they'll play the Detroit Tigers.

Now, I'm not a sport. I'll say that right up front. I don't follow baseball or football. Certainly not basketball. It's not that I hate sports (except maybe basketball. I haven't wanted to watch basketball since I graduated from high school and could no longer go to the home games when our team played Great Falls CM Russel High School's team. Dang, but CM Russell had some hot basketball players!). I couldn't tell you right now what channel my cable company carries ESPN on, let alone ESPN2 or 3 or 4 or however many there are.

No, If I have 2 or 3 hours to spend, and a football game is about to be on (not that I'd know this), I'd rather go see a movie instead.

But it wasn't always that way. My dad was a big Cardinals fan. His heroes had been Stan "The Man" Musial, Dizzy Dean, and Daffy Dean. By the time I was old enough to watch baseball with him, those players had long since retired, and in their place on the Cardinals were Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Curt Flood. It was a great team, and they won the World Series in 1967, with Bob Gibson (the pitcher, mind you) hitting a home run in the final game.

They were back in the 1968 World Series, against Detroit.

My grade school rolled a TV out to the lunch area so we could watch the final game during lunchtime. The kid who lived down the street from me was a Tigers fan, and when Bob Gibson (who was destined to win the '68 Series, just as he'd won the '67 Series) was robbed of his destiny by Mickey Lolich, that kid gloated insufferably, the ignorant cretin.

Like I said, I'm not a sport, but the 1968 World Series is indelibly burned in my memory. So what's wrong with the sportswriters? In the AP article I linked to at the top of this post, there isn't one mention of 1968. The closest they come to giving historical precedence is this:

The Cardinals, seeking their first World Series title since 1982, ended a long postseason streak by winning Game 7 on the road after dropping Game 6.

And the only mention of the Tigers is this one:

With that, the Cardinals earned their second pennant in three years and a date with the Detroit Tigers on Saturday night in Game 1 of the World Series.

The AP Sports department ought to be ashamed.

If I can remember, though, I might even have to find the ESPN channel and sit down and watch the Series this year. It will be sweet gratification to have the Cards pummel that kid's Tigers after all this time.