2006 MLB Thread

[Dan Gould]

Here's a much sadder 20th anniversary story:

Pitcher Sammy Stewart, who set a record by striking out seven straight batters in his first major league appearance and didn't give up a run in 12 postseason innings, is serving a minimum six years as a habitual offender in a South Carolina prison. Crack was his downfall:

Rock bottom

Ex-Sox pitcher Stewart threw it all away when he succumbed to drugs

By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff | October 25, 2006

SALISBURY, N.C. -- His life gone up in smoke, his eyes vacant, former major league pitcher Sammy Stewart remembers the beginning of the end.

"The first time I ever smoked crack was in Framingham, Mass.," says Stewart, serving at least six years at the Piedmont Correctional Institution for being a habitual felon, felony drug possession, and failure to appear in court on a felony charge.

"I never started smoking cocaine till I was 33 years old, till after I got out of baseball. I couldn't stop once I started. I'd go on a binge for three or four days or 35 days. I'd go till all the money was gone."

It was 1988, the year Stewart retired after pitching 10 seasons with the Orioles, Red Sox (1986), and Indians. Stewart, a big ol' country boy from North Carolina who in 1981 led the American League in ERA, decided to make the Boston area his home. He loved the fans, Legal Seafoods, and his big beautiful house in Framingham with a jacuzzi and a deck, from which he could see all the way to the Prudential building, 20 miles away.

"I went to a party and there were some girls moving around a little funny after going into the bathroom. I said, 'What are they doing?' and they said they were smoking crack. And I said, 'Won't that bust your heart?' They said, 'No, no, try it.' The high was euphoric, super. It took away the absence of baseball. It made me the big dog again, I guess. It made me the center of attention. It was a new toy."

Stewart who always wore No.53, and compiled a 59-48 record, 3.59 ERA, and 45 saves, now has a new number: 0390745. His records now are kept by the North Carolina Department of Corrections.

"It's a long way from 53 isn't it?" he mused.

He's been arrested 26 times since 1989 and charged with 43 crimes. He has been to prison six times. Saturday he turns 52. He's amazed he's still alive after smoking crack "tens of thousands of times."

"There's a lot of times I wished I would have died because I was pathetic," he says matter of factly. "I guess I started digging a hole for myself and it got so bad I got homeless, moneyless, friendless. I just started covering myself up instead of climbing out of the hole."

He estimates he made $3 million playing major league baseball. What's left? "Nothing. Not a penny," he says.

Stewart's diamond-studded 1983 World Series championship ring?

Pawned, for drugs, he says, and he adds, "As far as demons, I take responsibility for everything I've done."

Just a distant memory

The Stewart swagger is gone. The man who struck out Mike Schmidt in the seventh inning of Game 3 of the 1983 World Series with Schmidt the tying run -- a nasty slider away, he remembers -- is gone. Unrecognizable.

His eyes are sunken, he's bald now, his trademark Fu Manchu is gray, and he wears extra large prison-issue pants.

But when he talks baseball, his mind escapes the prison bars, the miles of barbed wire, and the occasional taunts of other inmates.

It was Sept. 1, 1978, and a young Sammy Stewart got to pitch in the show for the Orioles, against the White Sox.

"Rick Dempsey [Orioles catcher] said, 'Turn around. Look at the scoreboard,"' says Stewart, his eyes lighting up. "So I turned around and it said, 'Sammy Stewart has just tied a record by striking out six consecutive batters in his first major league appearance. The record was set by Karl Spooner of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954.'

"Well, I turned around and threw three of the hardest sliders I've ever thrown and I got the record, and that's 28 years ago, and I still got the record."

Hall of Fame Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer was surprised at Stewart's demise.

"He had two kids with cystic fibrosis," says Palmer (Stewart's son, Colin, died in 1991 at age 11; his daughter Alicia, 24, had a double lung transplant last year). "He had a lot of demons, but he was a very, very likable guy.

"When he came in I always felt he was under control with the job at hand. He could pitch with either hand. Once he was going to switch hands during a game against the Yankees. [Pitching coach] Stu Miller had to run out there and stop him."

"His future was unlimited," adds Palmer. "Maybe he'll learn, but he gets out and he's near 60 and he doesn't have a job; it's just a tragedy."

Another former Orioles teammate, pitcher Mike Flanagan, even wrote a letter to the judge in support of Stewart.

"I guess I wrote it because I remembered back when -- all the hope and promise that he had," says Flanagan. "He's had a horrible journey.

"Boy, he was abundantly talented. He could do just about anything. He could pitch every day. Pitch long, pitch short. He was talented in other ways, too. He could amuse the whole team with comedy routines we had. There were so many avenues that he could've gone into after baseball, certainly. Broadcasting, certainly. Great storyteller ... that's what we all remember.

"He came back for an old-timers game and he said he just got out of jail, but he was still that Sammy we knew in the clubhouse -- but obviously there was that whole other side."

"When Colin died he was broke and I steered him to B.A.T. [baseball Assistance Team]. There probably wasn't a guy around that he wasn't into for some money. There was always a great story why he needed the money. He seemed sincere, but you knew you never were going to see it again."

Peggy Stewart, his wife whom he is separated from, says she now works two jobs and is stone sober after dealing with substance abuse issues. "I look at his picture and I don't know who he is. He was once so funny and so giving and so athletic. In high school he hated drugs. He'd say, 'Why are they smoking marijuana? Why are they doing that to their bodies?"'

Peggy Stewart says the death of their son was not the reason Sammy turned to drugs. "That's an excuse, not a reason," she says.

"Oh yes, he's a con artist. Oh, goodness. His career should have been as a con artist. He could con me out of anything."

Sammy Stewart admits he is, indeed, a con artist.

When he burned all his bridges with his major league pals, he started living under bridges in his native Asheville, N.C. "I would panhandle," he says. "I was one of the best at that. I'd tell 'em I was traveling from Murphy to Columbia, S.C., and my brakes went out. That I helped a lot of people and I believe it comes back to you. Can you spare a little gas money? Sometimes I'd get a couple hundred dollars a day and it'd go right up the pipe."

Alicia Stewart says her dad used her illness to con people out of money she never saw. "I was at a gas station and this guy stared me down, was looking right through me," she says. "He said, 'Your dad told me you died."'

Last November she was driving home with her mother from her surgery in Chapel Hill, when she saw her dad walking along the road.

"He looked awful," she says. "Grass and dirt all over him. His face was yellowy and all wrinkled. His hair looked like Bozo the Clown and he smelled like he'd been living in a ditch. It was really bad; I was scared to hug him. I offered to get him some food and he said, 'No, no, no.'

"He offered me a smoke. He said, 'Now that you got new lungs you can have a cigarette.' He called me three days later and said, 'How bout giving daddy the $30 you promised me."'

Alicia says, "I love him and I always will," but she says she's tired of people saying, "Poor old Sammy."

"I fought real hard for my life for my Mom's sake, so she wouldn't have both of her children dead," she says. "And here he is just killing himself.

"That's the hardest thing to understand, because I'm not that kind of person. I'm a giving person. You don't care about other people, or your family ... you'll steal from family ... yeah.

Says Stewart, "I've been hit with hammers after ripping some people off. Sometimes they'd rob me and I'd rob them back." He's been shot at several times.

Stewart says he is writing a book. He wants to call it, "Life Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be."

Especially when he was trying to cop drugs.

"A young guy told me, 'I got what you want,' and he got in the car and he showed me a big bag. I had $160 and I tasted it. I said that ain't [expletive]. That's cornmeal. He said, 'Man, give me your money.' So I backhanded him ... knocked him out of the car, and drove away.

"All of a sudden I heard something. 'Pop, pop,' and my back window was already busted out; I had plastic on it. The first bullet went through that plastic window and down into the back seat. Then as I was going, the second bullet went through the trunk, through the back seat, and landed in the back of my driver [seat]. I found a little .38 bullet and I kept it."

Several stints in rehab have failed.

"I never really wanted to stop, I guess," he says. "It's pathetic when you go to a rehab and you've got the most cocaine in your system that they've ever had. Everybody's talking about turning their lives around, and I'm out there pretending I'm jogging and getting cocaine delivered. Fourteen days later I'm kicked out with a suitcase in my hand walking down the road wondering, 'where am I gonna go?"'

"I wound up sleeping under the bridges and passing a 40 [ounce bottle of beer] around with people that just got off the bus."

What demons possessed him?

"Well, I don't know, they talk about a hole in the heart, about something that needs to be filled up," he says. But temptation always follows him.

"There's drugs in [prison]," he says. "I've already seen them and I've turned 'em down."

Baseball is still never far from his thoughts. He's excited about this year's World Series.

"I'm gonna watch every game if I can," he says. "I love that it's Detroit-St. Louis, like in 1968. I used to pretend I was Mickey Lolich in my backyard."

"A lot of 'em [inmates] don't know who I am, they think it's a lot of [expletive], but I was second behind Rick Dempsey as the MVP in the 1983 World Series. It was like being in a goldfish bowl, but I loved the pressure. I pitched 12 scoreless innings in the postseason, never gave up a run."

The Orioles traded him to the Red Sox for Jackie Gutierrez Dec. 17, 1985, and he posted a 4-1 record in 27 appearances in 1986. "I loved Boston. When I started out in spring training, Ted Williams said, 'Hey country boy, you got a slider? I said, 'Yes sir, Mr. Williams.' He said, 'If they didn't come up with that pitch, I'd have hit .500."'

Stewart blames manager John McNamara for losing the 1986 World Series. Stewart says he had arm problems earlier in the season but was healed for the Series and throwing in the 90s. He says McNamara held a grudge. "If they let me pitch, we would've won that Series," he says.

He claims the problem with McNamara developed because the team bus once left him behind at Fenway Park.

Stewart says he was visiting his son in the hospital, got to the ballpark, and threw his bag on the bus. He was parking his car when the bus left without him.

Later, he got in traveling secretary Jack Rogers's face. "I said, 'Why'd you leave, when we waited on Roger Clemens and Jim Rice all year?"'

According to Stewart, Rogers told him to "Get off your rear and get to the ballpark on time." Stewart spat at him. "It was despicable, it was wrong," he says. Rogers died in 2003.

Stewart later had words with McNamara. "He said, 'If I was 15 years younger, I'd kick your ass,"' Stewart says. "I said, 'If you were 15 years younger, you and your Marine son couldn't kick my ass."'

He sat during the whole Series. "[McNamara] did not want me at all," he says. "He laid down on me and it cost us the World Series. I hated to see Al Nipper come out of the bullpen when I've never been scored on in the postseason and my arm was feeling good."

Stewart also absolved Bill Buckner for his famous error.

"I don't care if he had to ice seven parts of his body, I'd want him out there," he says. "We wouldn't have gotten there without him. He was the leader of that team. Him and [Don] Baylor."

Stewart says he's not worried about doing time. "I have the Lord with me now, His will be done."

"I'm gonna be OK," he says. "I had my fun. I partied; I knew I couldn't take nothing with me. But I'm gonna get to be where I'm gonna be an older man that's respected.

"I'd love to be a pitching coach. I'd do it for free. I'd love to teach kids. Be your own person and be proud about not doing drugs. I believe it's really cool to say no. I would tell any youngster to listen to the people you love. It's something I couldn't do at an older age."

"I want to give something to my children where they say, 'Daddy we're proud of you,' and whenever I die they'll say, 'My Daddy, he beat it. It took him a long time, but he beat it.'

"You know what? I'm gonna beat it. I will. I know I will."

Sad story.

[Soulstation1]

now i'd say the advantage is with the cards....

edit - typo

Edited October 25, 2006 by Soulstation1

[sheldonm]

Here's a much sadder 20th anniversary story:

Pitcher Sammy Stewart, who set a record by striking out seven straight batters in his first major league appearance and didn't give up a run in 12 postseason innings, is serving a minimum six years as a habitual offender in a South Carolina prison. Crack was his downfall:

Rock bottom

Ex-Sox pitcher Stewart threw it all away when he succumbed to drugs

By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff | October 25, 2006

SALISBURY, N.C. -- His life gone up in smoke, his eyes vacant, former major league pitcher Sammy Stewart remembers the beginning of the end.

"The first time I ever smoked crack was in Framingham, Mass.," says Stewart, serving at least six years at the Piedmont Correctional Institution for being a habitual felon, felony drug possession, and failure to appear in court on a felony charge.

"I never started smoking cocaine till I was 33 years old, till after I got out of baseball. I couldn't stop once I started. I'd go on a binge for three or four days or 35 days. I'd go till all the money was gone."

It was 1988, the year Stewart retired after pitching 10 seasons with the Orioles, Red Sox (1986), and Indians. Stewart, a big ol' country boy from North Carolina who in 1981 led the American League in ERA, decided to make the Boston area his home. He loved the fans, Legal Seafoods, and his big beautiful house in Framingham with a jacuzzi and a deck, from which he could see all the way to the Prudential building, 20 miles away.

"I went to a party and there were some girls moving around a little funny after going into the bathroom. I said, 'What are they doing?' and they said they were smoking crack. And I said, 'Won't that bust your heart?' They said, 'No, no, try it.' The high was euphoric, super. It took away the absence of baseball. It made me the big dog again, I guess. It made me the center of attention. It was a new toy."

Stewart who always wore No.53, and compiled a 59-48 record, 3.59 ERA, and 45 saves, now has a new number: 0390745. His records now are kept by the North Carolina Department of Corrections.

"It's a long way from 53 isn't it?" he mused.

He's been arrested 26 times since 1989 and charged with 43 crimes. He has been to prison six times. Saturday he turns 52. He's amazed he's still alive after smoking crack "tens of thousands of times."

"There's a lot of times I wished I would have died because I was pathetic," he says matter of factly. "I guess I started digging a hole for myself and it got so bad I got homeless, moneyless, friendless. I just started covering myself up instead of climbing out of the hole."

He estimates he made $3 million playing major league baseball. What's left? "Nothing. Not a penny," he says.

Stewart's diamond-studded 1983 World Series championship ring?

Pawned, for drugs, he says, and he adds, "As far as demons, I take responsibility for everything I've done."

Just a distant memory

The Stewart swagger is gone. The man who struck out Mike Schmidt in the seventh inning of Game 3 of the 1983 World Series with Schmidt the tying run -- a nasty slider away, he remembers -- is gone. Unrecognizable.

His eyes are sunken, he's bald now, his trademark Fu Manchu is gray, and he wears extra large prison-issue pants.

But when he talks baseball, his mind escapes the prison bars, the miles of barbed wire, and the occasional taunts of other inmates.

It was Sept. 1, 1978, and a young Sammy Stewart got to pitch in the show for the Orioles, against the White Sox.

"Rick Dempsey [Orioles catcher] said, 'Turn around. Look at the scoreboard,"' says Stewart, his eyes lighting up. "So I turned around and it said, 'Sammy Stewart has just tied a record by striking out six consecutive batters in his first major league appearance. The record was set by Karl Spooner of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954.'

"Well, I turned around and threw three of the hardest sliders I've ever thrown and I got the record, and that's 28 years ago, and I still got the record."

Hall of Fame Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer was surprised at Stewart's demise.

"He had two kids with cystic fibrosis," says Palmer (Stewart's son, Colin, died in 1991 at age 11; his daughter Alicia, 24, had a double lung transplant last year). "He had a lot of demons, but he was a very, very likable guy.

"When he came in I always felt he was under control with the job at hand. He could pitch with either hand. Once he was going to switch hands during a game against the Yankees. [Pitching coach] Stu Miller had to run out there and stop him."

"His future was unlimited," adds Palmer. "Maybe he'll learn, but he gets out and he's near 60 and he doesn't have a job; it's just a tragedy."

Another former Orioles teammate, pitcher Mike Flanagan, even wrote a letter to the judge in support of Stewart.

"I guess I wrote it because I remembered back when -- all the hope and promise that he had," says Flanagan. "He's had a horrible journey.

"Boy, he was abundantly talented. He could do just about anything. He could pitch every day. Pitch long, pitch short. He was talented in other ways, too. He could amuse the whole team with comedy routines we had. There were so many avenues that he could've gone into after baseball, certainly. Broadcasting, certainly. Great storyteller ... that's what we all remember.

"He came back for an old-timers game and he said he just got out of jail, but he was still that Sammy we knew in the clubhouse -- but obviously there was that whole other side."

"When Colin died he was broke and I steered him to B.A.T. [baseball Assistance Team]. There probably wasn't a guy around that he wasn't into for some money. There was always a great story why he needed the money. He seemed sincere, but you knew you never were going to see it again."

Peggy Stewart, his wife whom he is separated from, says she now works two jobs and is stone sober after dealing with substance abuse issues. "I look at his picture and I don't know who he is. He was once so funny and so giving and so athletic. In high school he hated drugs. He'd say, 'Why are they smoking marijuana? Why are they doing that to their bodies?"'

Peggy Stewart says the death of their son was not the reason Sammy turned to drugs. "That's an excuse, not a reason," she says.

"Oh yes, he's a con artist. Oh, goodness. His career should have been as a con artist. He could con me out of anything."

Sammy Stewart admits he is, indeed, a con artist.

When he burned all his bridges with his major league pals, he started living under bridges in his native Asheville, N.C. "I would panhandle," he says. "I was one of the best at that. I'd tell 'em I was traveling from Murphy to Columbia, S.C., and my brakes went out. That I helped a lot of people and I believe it comes back to you. Can you spare a little gas money? Sometimes I'd get a couple hundred dollars a day and it'd go right up the pipe."

Alicia Stewart says her dad used her illness to con people out of money she never saw. "I was at a gas station and this guy stared me down, was looking right through me," she says. "He said, 'Your dad told me you died."'

Last November she was driving home with her mother from her surgery in Chapel Hill, when she saw her dad walking along the road.

"He looked awful," she says. "Grass and dirt all over him. His face was yellowy and all wrinkled. His hair looked like Bozo the Clown and he smelled like he'd been living in a ditch. It was really bad; I was scared to hug him. I offered to get him some food and he said, 'No, no, no.'

"He offered me a smoke. He said, 'Now that you got new lungs you can have a cigarette.' He called me three days later and said, 'How bout giving daddy the $30 you promised me."'

Alicia says, "I love him and I always will," but she says she's tired of people saying, "Poor old Sammy."

"I fought real hard for my life for my Mom's sake, so she wouldn't have both of her children dead," she says. "And here he is just killing himself.

"That's the hardest thing to understand, because I'm not that kind of person. I'm a giving person. You don't care about other people, or your family ... you'll steal from family ... yeah.

Says Stewart, "I've been hit with hammers after ripping some people off. Sometimes they'd rob me and I'd rob them back." He's been shot at several times.

Stewart says he is writing a book. He wants to call it, "Life Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be."

Especially when he was trying to cop drugs.

"A young guy told me, 'I got what you want,' and he got in the car and he showed me a big bag. I had $160 and I tasted it. I said that ain't [expletive]. That's cornmeal. He said, 'Man, give me your money.' So I backhanded him ... knocked him out of the car, and drove away.

"All of a sudden I heard something. 'Pop, pop,' and my back window was already busted out; I had plastic on it. The first bullet went through that plastic window and down into the back seat. Then as I was going, the second bullet went through the trunk, through the back seat, and landed in the back of my driver [seat]. I found a little .38 bullet and I kept it."

Several stints in rehab have failed.

"I never really wanted to stop, I guess," he says. "It's pathetic when you go to a rehab and you've got the most cocaine in your system that they've ever had. Everybody's talking about turning their lives around, and I'm out there pretending I'm jogging and getting cocaine delivered. Fourteen days later I'm kicked out with a suitcase in my hand walking down the road wondering, 'where am I gonna go?"'

"I wound up sleeping under the bridges and passing a 40 [ounce bottle of beer] around with people that just got off the bus."

What demons possessed him?

"Well, I don't know, they talk about a hole in the heart, about something that needs to be filled up," he says. But temptation always follows him.

"There's drugs in [prison]," he says. "I've already seen them and I've turned 'em down."

Baseball is still never far from his thoughts. He's excited about this year's World Series.

"I'm gonna watch every game if I can," he says. "I love that it's Detroit-St. Louis, like in 1968. I used to pretend I was Mickey Lolich in my backyard."

"A lot of 'em [inmates] don't know who I am, they think it's a lot of [expletive], but I was second behind Rick Dempsey as the MVP in the 1983 World Series. It was like being in a goldfish bowl, but I loved the pressure. I pitched 12 scoreless innings in the postseason, never gave up a run."

The Orioles traded him to the Red Sox for Jackie Gutierrez Dec. 17, 1985, and he posted a 4-1 record in 27 appearances in 1986. "I loved Boston. When I started out in spring training, Ted Williams said, 'Hey country boy, you got a slider? I said, 'Yes sir, Mr. Williams.' He said, 'If they didn't come up with that pitch, I'd have hit .500."'

Stewart blames manager John McNamara for losing the 1986 World Series. Stewart says he had arm problems earlier in the season but was healed for the Series and throwing in the 90s. He says McNamara held a grudge. "If they let me pitch, we would've won that Series," he says.

He claims the problem with McNamara developed because the team bus once left him behind at Fenway Park.

Stewart says he was visiting his son in the hospital, got to the ballpark, and threw his bag on the bus. He was parking his car when the bus left without him.

Later, he got in traveling secretary Jack Rogers's face. "I said, 'Why'd you leave, when we waited on Roger Clemens and Jim Rice all year?"'

According to Stewart, Rogers told him to "Get off your rear and get to the ballpark on time." Stewart spat at him. "It was despicable, it was wrong," he says. Rogers died in 2003.

Stewart later had words with McNamara. "He said, 'If I was 15 years younger, I'd kick your ass,"' Stewart says. "I said, 'If you were 15 years younger, you and your Marine son couldn't kick my ass."'

He sat during the whole Series. "[McNamara] did not want me at all," he says. "He laid down on me and it cost us the World Series. I hated to see Al Nipper come out of the bullpen when I've never been scored on in the postseason and my arm was feeling good."

Stewart also absolved Bill Buckner for his famous error.

"I don't care if he had to ice seven parts of his body, I'd want him out there," he says. "We wouldn't have gotten there without him. He was the leader of that team. Him and [Don] Baylor."

Stewart says he's not worried about doing time. "I have the Lord with me now, His will be done."

"I'm gonna be OK," he says. "I had my fun. I partied; I knew I couldn't take nothing with me. But I'm gonna get to be where I'm gonna be an older man that's respected.

"I'd love to be a pitching coach. I'd do it for free. I'd love to teach kids. Be your own person and be proud about not doing drugs. I believe it's really cool to say no. I would tell any youngster to listen to the people you love. It's something I couldn't do at an older age."

"I want to give something to my children where they say, 'Daddy we're proud of you,' and whenever I die they'll say, 'My Daddy, he beat it. It took him a long time, but he beat it.'

"You know what? I'm gonna beat it. I will. I know I will."

Sad story.

Sad indeed but this shit happens every day to the common Joe. As time goes by, I have become numb to these stories or at least the ability to feel sad for many of them.....straignten up and fly right!!!

[sheldonm]

now i'd say the advatage is with the cards....

I have felt all along that once the Cards came to play with their everyday line up instead of the patchwork line-up they used most of the season, they would be ok.....I mean it's not the '27 Yankees they are playing! That said, I remember saying somewhere on this thread (or was it last year?) that all these preditions and experts make me crazy and that the team that wins would be the team that executes the best in each game (and also the reason I don't wait time/put much energy in predictions). I'm in STL staying at my sister's house and had a chance to attend last nights game......very cold for baseball (but not cold enough for football)! Hope to attend tonight's game but tickets are not confirmed yet

m~

GO CARDINALS!!!

[Brad]

I would have to say that with Suppan pitching tonight, the Cards should be favored to put a stranglehold on this WS but since I've been wrong on every other prediction, I won't make any prediction other than to say that it looks like the long layoff has reduced the opposition to tiger cubs.

[Soulstation1]

Dancing with the stars has higher ratings than the WS.....

[kulu se mama]

Dancing with the stars has higher ratings than the WS.....

yeah - "my name is earl" and "the office" are both repeats, so they wouldn't have to compete with the world series.

some competition.

[Quincy]

Dancing with the stars has higher ratings than the WS.....

And Paul Stanley has the best selling album on CDUniverse. Popularity isn't everything.

[sheldonm]

Dancing with the stars has higher ratings than the WS.....

Says a lot about this country! -_-

[Big Al]

Who would've thought this WS would be this exciting, with the NL team one win away from the crown? Especially after everyone had predicted a boring four-game blowout on the side of the Tigers. Wow!

[Soulstation1]

tigers can't catch / field / throw the ball

Edited October 27, 2006 by Soulstation1

[JSngry]

Dancing with the stars has higher ratings than the WS.....

Says a lot about this country! -_-

Especially if the ratings drop now that Springer's off.

[Dan Gould]

I'd find the Cardinals being on the cusp a bit less annoying if the Tigers weren't actively giving the games away with stupid shit.

I also find it very annoying that David Eckstein was developed by the Red Sox and then left off the 40 man roster and the Angels snagged him. Funny how after 2004, the Sox pry away Renteria, Cabrera goes to the Angels, and the Cards "settle" for Eckstein, and now Eckstein is winning another ring for them, at a fraction of the money those other guys got. He is certainly a model for youngsters of how to play the game.

[Soulstation1]

i didn't know preston wilson was mookie's son

[BERIGAN]

Dancing with the stars has higher ratings than the WS.....

Says a lot about this country! -_-

Yep....let me second that -_- That being said, somebody explain something(actually a few somethings to me) to me. TV ratings seem to forever go downward. Hell, I have had to ask at my Gym with about 12 TVs, and 2 resturants that had their T.V.s on to put a playoff game on instead of the World Series of poker. Yet attendance keeps going up, as do ticket prices. 14 teams drew 2.5 million or better!!!

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/attendance I am sure quite a few folks here recall years that their team barely drew 1 million fans. When I first became a Card fan around 1977, they typically had 12-15 thousand fans per game.

People also will bitch that a W.S. has 2 teams that aren't from the east coast, so therefore, who cares?(Not saying anyone here has said it, but it often comes up) But it never matters in football if a team from Green Bay, or the Vikings are in the Superbowl, same holds true in with the N.B.A. why is that??

Edited October 27, 2006 by BERIGAN

[Dan Gould]

Your comparison to the NFL and the NBA - number one, NBA ratings are down ever since MJ quit. But the NFL - the big difference is that Superbowl Sunday attracts boatloads of casual fans. Football has the perfect set-up: one game per week makes those games "events" and the ultimate championship game is the ultimate "event".

Baseball, on the other hand, needs a compelling matchup to get attention from casual fans. This series is the antithesis of that.

On top of that, its absolutely true that in a universe of cable TV, youtube and everything else that you can find on the internet, TV ratings have trended down for a long time. The fact that attendance is up so much suggests several things:

the sport is healthier than post-season TV ratings suggest

BUT

Not everyone who fills up the stadiums in June want to watch a world series they don't have a stake in.

Last point is this, if you were watching the game at a sports bar, those sets with the WS of poker on didn't impact the ratings one bit. Neilsen doesn't count sports bars or dorms or a lot of places that a lot of fans watch games.

[Quincy]

But it never matters in football if a team from Green Bay, or the Vikings are in the Superbowl, same holds true in with the N.B.A. why is that??

Dan already mentioned it, but it doesn't really hold true about the NBA. Just Googling around it the ratings for the Detroit-San Antonio series was the lowest since the New Jersey-San Antonio series. Spurs fans should be paranoid about referee calls when they face the Lakers! The previous low was in '81 when the finals were shown late at night on tape delay. Those were the days!

Ratings for the World Series vs. the NBA Finals from 2005 to 2001

2005 11.1 08.2

2004 15.8 11.5

2003 13.9 06.5

2002 11.9 10.2

2001 15.7 12.1

I don't trust the formatting to include readable tables to include team names in the above. However here are a couple of Nielsen links concerning the World Series & the NBA Finals:

Wiki's NBA ratings page

FOX WS ratings, not as detailed as the NBA link

[Neal Pomea]

Well, if StL wins tonight, Eckstein has a good shot at being named MVP! Another RBI to take the lead.

I picked Cardinals in 6 at post 1165 on page 78, admitting that I have no idea.

I wonder how the ratings will be. The best ratings seem to occur when the sports media drums up a story on NY or Boston (Don Zimmer's hemorrhoids will do), though last year's matchup was compelling enough with the Black Sox curse and Houston who'd never been to WS before. And though ChiSox swept, you have to remember that each game was contested down to the wire and Houston could have been the one to sweep.

This year's series was sort of interrupted by rain, in both the NLCS and WS. Threw the Tigers out of whack. If it falls to StL, it is poetic justice, revenge for the 68 series game 7 that should have been called because of rain. The conditions of that game threw Gibson off, and the runs were scored because Flood slipped in the wet outfield.

Unless, of course, the Tigers take game 5, 6, and 7!

Edited October 28, 2006 by It Should be You

[tatifan]

It finally came to me last night watching LaRussa on the post game interview.....he's the missing McKenzie brother, Dave Thomas' long lost twin brother!

[Chuck Nessa]

Go Cubs.

[Neal Pomea]

Congratulations St. Louis!

[Noj]

So much for the supposedly hugely superior AL! I'm glad the NL won.

What happened to the Tigers' defense? Errors were their undoing.

[sheldonm]

i didn't know preston wilson was mookie's son

Step son!

[sheldonm]

Huge win for the Cards....got healthy at the right time....timely hitting, too many errors by the Tigers, good defense by the Cards (-Duncan) and great pitching by the Cards starters/bullpen.......Having been a Cardinal fan for 40 years, I am lovin' it!

All that said, the Tigers are a very good, young team will be back; Jim L is one class act.....!

m~

[sheldonm]

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