The White Sox were the best team in the American League all year, which this year meant that they were the best team in baseball. They are a team without a glaring weakness. An excellent starting pitching staff and the best bullpen in the majors. Given that most teams have an atrocious bullpen that gave them a huge advantage all year. Combine the pitching and an excellent defense (2nd best DER in baseball), with a solid 1-9 lineup which included power at every position except leadoff and you have a world series caliber team, superior to the offensive juggernauts, the Yankees and Red Sox.

This underappreciated White Sox team is clearly ahead of most of the recent champions, including the D-Backs, Angels, and Marlins and at least as good as all but the '98 Yankees, '86 Mets, and the 75-76 Big Red Machine.

A worthy champion, but unfortunately an anticlimactic series, although without queston an exciting four games. Although the Astros proved to be a worthy oppenent, their presence simply made for an unexciting matchup. One thing often overlooked is the glamour associated with two tradition-rich teams matching up on baseball's grandest stage. The White Sox-Cardinals or even White Sox-Braves would have generated a greater aura given the history of those franchises. the Astros had the feel of an expansion team finally making it to the big time and just being happy to be there.

My last thought is to note that teams that are up 3-0 in the world series are now 19-3 in game 4 and the other three times that team won game 5. Although this trend clearly doesn't exist in the earlier playoff rounds, it continues time after time in the world series.

Great point JS about that ballpark. It reminds me of when we played ball in the elementary school gym and the ball was in play off the wall. If they drew a line half way up the green monster and above it was a home run that would approximate what they have in Houston.

I still think the squeeze was the right play, but your point is well taken and that is the last time that I praise McCarver because whenever I do it comes back to haunt me.

And ditto when it comes to POing the wife

Can anyone come up with one good reason why replay should not be used to determine whether a ball was a home run or not. The umps are too far away to get the close ones correct as often as they should, be it fair or foul, or fan interference or not, or one like last night. Given this room for error and the fact that a homer is the biggest game changing play there is, there just has to be replay, if only for this call.

On the possibility of a squeeze play, McCarver actually made a good point which was that even if it fails -- which can only mean that the batter misses and the runner is nailed -- the trail runner would move up to second so you're not losing as much. It was the obvious play there, in fact the very situation the play was designed for, when one run will win you the game.

Guillen deserves a lot of credit for bringing in Buehrle in the 14th. He was his best pitcher and he knew that winning last night would put the hammer down. Garner did not use his best and he paid for it

Dave:

I didn't mean to imply that you don't know the rules, but I just meant to point out the pointlessness of the argument that the pitch would have been a ball if Dye's bat wasn't there. Dye put the bat in a position where the ball could have hit it, that was his fault. A batter with a better eye might have just taken ball 4 and the controversy never would have happened. You're saying the call was less unfair because well, the pitcher threw a bad pitch anyway, but you're discounting the batter's mistake.

Anyway, yeah, bias matters a lot, especially on the close calls, but less so now with superslow mo and all that. Now it's usually pretty hard to argue with the replay. A classic example of bias: My father, a Brooklyn native, always insisted that Jackie slid under Yogi's tag and was just safe stealing home in the '55 series. I was at the hall of fame a few months ago and I heard a man in a Yankee jacket explaining to his kid that the film shows he was out. I've seen the film many times and, to these Brooklyn eyes, he always looks safe

We're getting far afield here, but the record has to be set straight. The Music city miracle was, as the replay showed, the RIGHT call. In real time everyone I know thought it was a forward pass. Then, to all our surprise, replay revealed it was the right call. Remember that in that case, the "tie" would go toward the return team given that a parallel pass is OK. So, if years later you still think that was the wrong call, then the only explanations are (1) being blind as a bat (or a baseball ump) or (2) team bias.