Top five potentially drool worthy World Series matchups: Number one!!

Playoff baseball! Yes!

If you love baseball, and you love playoffs, this is the best time of the year EVER. Playoff baseball! It's just billions of fun, from the frigid air, the batters wearing balaclavas, the colourful bunting and a bouncing, energetic Fenway crowd, playoff baseball, in a word, rocks.

As we move into the most exciting part of the baseball season, one wonders, what is the best possible World Series matchup for 2008? Bear in mind this is a list of the best, most enjoyable and indeed most watchable World Series matchups. Not the most likely to occur by any stretch.

Let's chop it up.

Top five potentially drool worthy World Series matchups: Number one!

Boston v Chicago Cubs

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, this is the tastiest potential World Series matchup. From the actual on-diamond matchups to the surrounding intrigue, this series would have something for everyone.

Boston took a tiny bit of the intrigue out of a Cubs/Red Sox World Series by winning in '04 and '07, however the two teams are still similar in that their tortured fan bases went so long without a sniff of success. Of course, for the Cubs, that drought continues. If they made the series against Boston, they would only have to look across the diamond for inspiration as to how to end a billion year drought.

Check out the potential pitching rotation matchup that this series could throw up.
  • Game one: Beckett v Dempster
  • Game two: Lester v Zambrano
  • Game three: Matsuzaka v Harden
Those are three potentially explosive pitching matchups right there. For those who hold pitching over the long ball, this would be a series made in heaven.


Then there is the two beautiful parks the two potential protagonists play in. Wrigley Field versus Fenway Park. It simply doesn't get any better than that.

If you do like high scoring baseball, you would be satisfied at some juncture, surely, considering the Cubs and Red Sox combined to score 1,700 runs in 2008. That was not a typo. 1,700. I kid you not. Look it up.

Big Papi, Soriano, Bay, Lee, Ramirez, Pedroia, Drew, Lowell, Edmonds and Youkilis. Plenty of great batters that should bust out in a game or two unless the incredible pitching on show finds a way to stifle them for the entire series.

Two passionate sets of fans, two great parks, two great lineups, two great managers, two great pitching staffs and two great bullpens.

Put it this way. Close your eyes for a second, and imagine game one is just about to start, at Fenway, and Beckett is warming up, with Soriano stepping up to the plate, the Fenway crowd buzzing, the whole of Chicago and Boston on edge. You are telling me that isn't a juicy potential World Series matchup?

Damn right it is.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Excellent few posts - really whetting the appettite for 3.07 am Irish time....
Cormac said…
Thanks Brian! Appreciate that. Can't wait for the playoffs to start, such a great time of the year.