The World Series

Wow, it's been nearly a week since the World Series! It all happened so fast, I hardly even noticed. In keeping with my yearlong tradition of not posting a single article on this site during the duration of the actual World Series, I've been keeping quiet this week.

I'll admit, I was pulling for the Rangers. I think they're a cooler team and I generally like the AL over the NL. Plus, go Dodgers, thus boo Giants.

But as I go through the listing process that I do after each season, I'm starting to like the Giants' makeup more and more. I'm happy Lincecum has a ring: he deserves it. The supporting cast around him, maybe not so much... like the Aubrey Huffs, the Juan Uribes, the Nate Schierholtz's. And Buster Posey hasn't even proven his worth in the majors yet, so he's jumped the gun a little. 

Both teams were under-the-radar types, which resulted in the lowest rated world series ever. I was just thankful it wasn't the same two teams from last year. It's always good to see parity in the major leagues. It shows that big budgets can't always buy championships. (By the way, we saw a similar result in the California Gubernatorial race this year.)

Which brings me to another cool part about the off-season: Rewards Season. Soon we'll (probably) see Jason Heyward upset Posey for the Rookie of the Year and other voting results that will prompt all sorts of analysis and pounding-on-tables behavior from our preeminent sports journalists.

Did I say "cool" part of the off-season? I meant "ultimately useless."

Although, I do think All-Star selections and MVP-type awards voting are useful tools for beginners to get involved with the sport. Once you have a good handle on the best players, it's easier to get into the supporting casts around them. In addition to my 2010 baseball list, I'm going to try and use an All-Star approach to learn more about basketball this off-season. It's not technically the subject matter for this blog, but maybe I'll even talk a little about some of my findings.

That's pretty much it. It's been such an emotional letdown after the season ended that I haven't really been able to concentrate on much, at least not analytically. List-season will change all that though. You just get ready for some numbers and some crunching of said numbers...