Or, "Darren really does have too much time on his hands."
Or, "Take Mattingly's monument out of Monument Park because Yogi's monument keeps laughing at it."
Or, "That's baseball for ya!"
Or, "Barry Bonds doesn't pitch."
While climbing out from under the oeuvre of sportswriting opinion that is expressing amazement and faux outrage because Alex Rodriguez has not won a World Series after ten seasons in the big leagues, I started to think of a team.
A team of current players only.
A team full o' Chokers and Losers.
I now present the Chokerville Losers, along with number of rings they've won in their careers (token rings not included):
Starting Lineup
c - Mike Piazza (0)
1b - Frank Thomas (0)
2b - Craig Biggio (0)
3b - Alex Rodriguez (0)
ss - Nomar Garciaparra (0)
lf - Barry Bonds (0)
cf- Ken Griffey Jr. (0)
rf - Sammy Sosa (0)
dh - Jeff Bagwell (0)
Bench
Jim Edmonds (0)
Jeff Kent (0)
Rafael Palmeiro (0)
Ivan Rodriguez (1)
Miguel Tejada (0)
Jim Thome (0)
Omar Vizquel (0)
Starting Pitchers
Roger Clemens (2)
Tom Glavine (1)
Randy Johnson (1)
Greg Maddux (1)
Pedro Martinez (1)
Bullpen
Roberto Hernandez (0)
Trevor Hoffman (0)
John Smoltz (1)
Billy Wagner (0)
Purty good team, actually. I even left quite a few sluggers off the team just to make sure I had some decent backup infielders and a bullpen, which I'll never need to use.
My team has accumulated (approximately) 17 MVPs, 22 Cy Young Awards, and 168 All Star selections.
My team has at least 19 Hall of Famers out of 25 players. Even more than the '98 Yankees.
Yet, in (approximately) 349 cumulative seasons, my team has only won 8 Championship rings. That's only 4 more rings than Chuck Knoblauch won all by himself.
Is my team cherry picked? Sure.
Is it rigged to prove a point? Yup.
But go ahead and pick any other roster consisting of 25 current players. Heck, you can pick any player going back 25 years, as long as I get to add Edgar Martinez (0) and Tony Gwynn (0). You can pick all the clutch players you want.
Will your team be able to beat my Loser team? I doubt it.
2 comments:
You couldn't find any decent starting pitchers that hadn't won a ring? Is that just a reinforcement of the theory that you need good pitching to win in the World Series? Or maybe good pitching beats good hitting?
Sure I could. I could pretty easily construct a good starting five: Mussina, Hampton, Hudson, Zito, Halladay. Probably have about 40 yrs there and no rings. Only one Cy Young, but almost a few more.
Bartolo Colon has a Cy Young, but I'd still take these other guys over Colon.
I don't know if good pitching beats good hitting. Extraordinary pitching beats good hitting.
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