King, if you would be so kind, please help in getting the national sports media to lay the "Philly fans booed Santa Claus" bullshit to rest once and for all. It happened once, it happened more than forty years ago, most of the people who took part in it are either dead or infirm, and frankly we're all sick to fucking death of it here. Thank you.

BTW, the Phillies are the better team and they're proving it in this Series. The Rays are this year's Colorado Rockies, the Plucky Underdogs Make Good story that sportswriters love to adhere to like suckfish on a shark. Sort of like the Philly Fans Booed Santa Claus story.

Really, I don't understand why people keep thinking of the Rays as underdogs. Sure, the franchise doesn't have a tradition of winning, or any history of winning, prior to this season. But this season they finished with 97 wins, the second most in the Majors (behind the Angels 100 wins, tied with the Chicago Cubs) in a division that includes traditional powers of the Red Sox and Yankees.

One of the things that separates baseball from the other sports is the large number of games in the regular season. Also, due to the long season, there can be quite a few changes in a team between the start of the season and the end. Sure, the playoffs are a poor way to measure which team is the so called "best" but I'd rather not have them stretch out for any longer, which is the way to do that (best of 15 series, yeah, that's enough games to determine who's best).

Better team?

I would like to suggest that it's more of the up and down cycle of pitchers and hitters at the most opportune of times..coupled with of course the "I" word......injuries.

BTW, you won't know anything definitive about the injuries t'il the series is over...See: Franconna on Josh Beckett

Rays have cooled off demonstrably from the Red Sox series and whether it's fatigue vs the well rested Phillies it's all about carpe diem from here on in....

No matter how it plays out the Rays have been an inspiring group of young talent all year long so I'm tipping my cap to them.

You are right--it's impossible to know which is the better team. No championship game or series, or even 162 game season tells us. Not for baseball, not any sport. But that's not the subject at hand. The subject--the results so far of this World Series--is. And in that, you, as so much of the national media, seem unwilling to credit the Phillies. In other words, the story last night, according to Salon, wasn't that the Phillies won but that the Rays lost.

Say that about a 10-2 game and you're begging for letter-writers to write in as they did here, making big claims about the Phillies. Give a little credit when it's due and avoid the shouting.

By far, the biggest story so far of this series isn't the Phillies lack of clutch hitting or even their home run hitting or even the spotty umpiring, but the Phillies pitching. The Rays have something like 25 hits so far in 4 games. Phillies pitching has been dominant, so far.

And it's a story that tells us much about the catcher, Ruiz, and the manager. Manuel isn't the most strategic (he manages from the gut, I'd say) but so far he is out-managing Maddon, who clearly LOOKS like a much smarter man.

During and after the ALCS, even Sox fans were declaring the Rays the "better team." I caught a lot of guff (and was even compared to John Lackey) for saying that by advanced baseball analysis (that is, looking at things beyond the record), the Sox were better. Runs scored, runs allowed, equivalent averages, whatever you wanted to use, would lead you to believe the Sox were about 5 games better than the Rays.

But yet, because the Rays won the season series (including playoffs) 14-11, they were definitely better?

Please. Without Mike Lowell and with an ailing David Ortiz and Josh Beckett, I would go so far as to say the Rays were probably the better team in the ALCS. But by no means was it clear from the results.

By the way, in the adjusted standings the Rays are about 10 games better than the Phils. Wow.

and admit that there's no clear way of measuring "better." The champions are the ones who win during the series we declare the championship series. If the champion were supposed to be the team that was "better" by some other measure, we could cancel the World Series and just run the numbers. To say that the Sox were "better" than the Rays, or the Rays are now "better" than the Phillies sound like Hillary Clinton supporters who are still claiming theirs is the "better" candidate.

And for the Phils fans whining that they are not getting proper respect from the media (it's all about the Rays losing, not the Phils playing well), I'll make you a deal -- as a Rays fan I'd be willing to give you all the dewy-eyed media coverage, and you give us the 3-1 lead going into tonight's game. Jeez, isn't impending victory sufficiently satisfying to you guys?

thanks, king -- despite your ongoing refusal to quote me in your actual column -- this is basically all i was saying. and to "gogorilla" in the other thread: i did not say that stats are "irrelevant," i said i didn't need to point to them; more because i'm too lazy to look them up than anything else.

to repeat: i agree; in a sense, whoever wins the world series is the better team. but looking at the whole season, what the rays accomplished vs. what the phils did, and in the league and division they played in, i believe the rays are better -- or at least you could convincingly make that argument.

with having to label the team that wins any championship "better" than the loser. We want our winners to be the best - not some fluke, not winning because of poor officiating, or riding a "hot streak", or because they were lucky. Were the Giants really better than the Patriots last season? Winning a championship doesn't inherently make you the better team but the sports pundits have to cart that phrase out so we can all feel good that only the best win. Winners win because they are better than the losers. Did the Phillies get lucky that Moyer didn't get lit up like in his previous outings or was Moyer really that much better of a pitcher? The "best" team doesn't always win - the world is not black and white. The sports pundits need to get over it and call it like the rest of the fans actually see it.