The top teams from the American and National leagues during the regular season will meet in this year's World Series as the Boston Red Sox advance to face the St. Louis Cardinals beginning Wednesday.
The Red Sox and Cardinals each needed six games to claim their league's championship, though they went about clinching in different ways. The Cardinals received another stellar performance from starting pitcher Michael Wacha (the guy just doesn't give up runs) in finishing off the Los Angeles Dodgers with Friday's 9-0 win, while the Red Sox used a dramatic grand slam from Shane Victorino to rally past the Detroit Tigers 5-2 Saturday. That was the second Sox slam to tie or take the lead in a game in this series.
This World Series has all the makings of one gigantic pitcher's duel. On one side, the Cardinals have Wacha, Adam Wainwright and Lance Lynn. On the other, the Sox have Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz and ...Wait a sec. Does this say John Lackey? How can that be? I thought Lackey wasn't supposed to be good. That's what all the Red Sox fans were saying a couple of years ago. He's got a 3.00 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP during the postseason, you say? Well then, I guess we'll go with Lackey.
At the very least this won't play out like 2004, when the Red Sox rode the wave from rallying out of an 0-3 hole to the New York Yankees all the way to a sweep of the Cardinals in the Series. And as a bonus, that became the surprise ending to the 2005 Drew Barrymore-Jimmy Fallon movie "Fever Pitch." Talk about fortuitous timing.
I'm looking at this series going at least six games, if not seven this time. And really, when you have two teams that play as hard and as well as the Red Sox and the Cardinals, it should go that far. To have it end in four or five games would be a travesty.
Who wins it? I'm taking the team with the best karma right now -- the Red Sox. They just seem poised for another out-of-the-blue world championship run.
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