I'm really loving this. I spent my childhood supporting the Astros and the Sox. (Character-building, we used to say. It's character-building to support the Sox and the 'Stros. Teach you about the agony of defeat. Like the football season- we rooted for the Saints - didn't do that well enough on its own.) Watching them not just win the Series, but sweep it?

Oh my god, it's like eating bread pudding with as much rum sauce as you can hold and then finding out it's calorie free. It's like reading a notice from your bank and finding out someone paid off your mortgage. It's like waking up in the morning 20lbs slimmer.

Not quite the walk-on-water, delivered-from-oppression kinda' WOW euphoria I got in 2004, mind you, but still pretty WOW.

In an earlier article, I posted that the Red Sox would win. I was dismissed as being "just a fan".

I beg to differ this time: this team rocked, this Series rocked, and the Boston Red Sox are now a championship team that has earned their way to this spot.

I've been through so many shutdowns, blow-outs and heartbreaks that I can't even remember them all. This Series makes up for them all in spades.

Sometimes I hate being right, but this isn't one of them.

Well the Bosox swept the Series, validating the "rust" theory I laid out in the two previous message threads. As I predicted, the Rocks would never regain their pre-Series form and would be swept in 4 games, or at most get one victory and go out in five.

The reason is clear: when batters lay off for so long their timing goes. It decays each day following a negative exponential law, peaking at > 6 days and more. The Tigers discovered the pronounced rust effect last year - they lasted five games after a six day break. The Rockies discovered it this year, swept in 4 games after an 8-day break.

As The Sporting News noted, this will force a re-thinking of how managers deal with long layoffs before a Series. The writer of one SN piece noted it would have been better that Hurdle get the Rockies on a plane to Tucson and play Triple A teams in live games. Rather than absud "squad games" in Denver.

As the writer noted, players never go full tilt in squad games - pitchers don't go really inside- for fear of injury, and they don't rip the pitch out at full speed. The hitters' timing suffers.

Hopefully, this will assist and guide the next team (AL or NL)

that endures a long layoff. One can hope anyway, because otherwise most Series will be snoozers.

Now, this is to take nothing from the Bosox, but come on. IF the Rocks had preserved some semblance of their timing at least they'd have made more of a contest of it, maybe lasting six games instead of suffering the ignominy of going out in four.

The rest of recent sports?

The Spurs anihilate the Cavs in the NBA Finals. The Super Bowl was Peyton Manning versus Rex Grossman. The NHL Stanley Cup was a blowout, although I didn't know that and had to look it up. The First PGA Fed-Ex Cup had 4 guys in contention going into the final and deciding tournament and Tiger beat them all by 15 plus strokes.

The NCAA basketball final was abuse, men and womens. The BCS football championship was embarrassing. Oregon State slaughtered North Carolina back to back by 13 runs to claim the College Baseball World Series.

I can't imagine all the losers had pre ass-whipping layoffs.

Well, I'd want to see the more results before I'd say it was proven but it was fairly clear that the Rockies timing was off though, iirc, they didn't hit all that much in the earlier series. Of course the Red Sox realized it and pounded them with fastballs.

Anyway, the Red Sox were a preseason favorite, they tied for the best regular season record, were favored in all they playoff rounds and, more importantly, won. Good job.

For not mentioning A-Rod. That's all we're hearing, here in NYC. You'd we Sox fans would get one of sweetness, but no.

The issue is really a weak national league, right now. Any of the contending AL teams--Angels, Yanks, Tigers, Indians--would have been favored over any of the contending NL teams.

That's bound to change. Perhaps the Rockies will lead the way.

like our New York know-nothings, Mike Franscesa and Chris (Mad Dog) Russo, will stop sneering at Theo Epstein and his belief in sabermetrics? Like most mainstream sports writers, they seem to deeply resent the idea that some young nerd who never put on a jock strap can out-manager the old-time baseball guys they worship. But it sure looks like it's true.

It looks awkward and ridiculous, like a white college girl dancing to soul music.

It's a relic. Let it go.

Oh, and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!

Just look at the Patriots. There's no way a team is that good without some significant cheating.

Hearing one of the commentators in Sunday's Skins-bashing talk about how Rodney Harrison plays like a much younger man not three weeks after he gets off a suspension for HGH just shows how blind insiders are to the signs staring them in the face.

Then you get all kinds of hair-splitting about how everyone in the Steel Curtain bulked up on steroids, or how cheating is everywhere in the league. Doesn't change the facts. Something very, very obvious is staring the NFL right in the face and...well, it's great for ratings, so who cares?

I wish Rasheed Wallace played for the Detroit Lions so he could tell the truth about the NFL just like he did about the NBA.

But hey. As long as can still gamble on games, and it still looks just a little bit random, who cares, right?

The Red Sox statistical domination declined a bit in the World Series.

Youkilis came to bat in game 4 against Cleveland in the top of the sixth, Red Sox down 7-0. He started the back to back to back homers. From the top of the 6th of that game through the conclusion of that series the Red Sox as a team batted .367, with an on base of .445 and a .650 slugging for those 3 plus games.

In the days before playing Colorado, Boston beat a better team than the Rockies--the Indians--and beat them worse than they beat the Rockies. And Cleveland was not on a layoff.