No use punching a hole in this series' story line

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/08/SPGATLL6T91.DTL

So it's Athletics-Tigers. Of course it's Athletics-Tigers. Two teams that aren't the New York Yankees, which for many people is sufficient on its face to recommend the American League Championship Series.
But unless you're an oldie-timer and remember 1972, Bert Campaneris, Lerrin LaGrow and the Winged Louisville Slugger of Death, these are two teams whose most visceral connection is Jeremy Bonderman and the hole in Billy Beane's Wall. And that's not much at all.
It's a Moneyball story, of course, and like most Moneyball stories, it makes some people's eyes slide out their ears. But it's a fast one, and hell, we've got three days of vamping to do.
Seems the A's were drafting in the first round of the 2001 amateur draft, and when their turn came, Bonderman was sitting there to be taken. And was. Except that Bonderman didn't fit the W.L. Beane template, so when Bonderman's name was given, Beane allegedly decked a wall. Beane disputes some of the details, which is fine enough as far as it goes, but the short story is that a year to the day after Bonderman signed with the A's, he was sent to Detroit as the player to be named in the trade that sent Carlos Peña and Franklyn German to New York for Jeff Weaver, who turned into Ted Lilly.
And now Bonderman has just dope-slapped the Yankees into oblivion, and is now part of the lead-in to the ALCS nobody saw coming, even as recently as Wednesday morning.
The two teams have obvious similarities -- young pitching (Barry Zito-Rich Harden-Dan Haren vs. Bonderman-Nate Robertson-Justin Verlander) and old pitching (Esteban Loaiza vs. Kenny Rogers) throwing to an old catcher who plays almost every game (Jason Kendall vs. Ivan Rodriguez). They have the high-powered White Sox discard (Frank Thomas vs. Magglio Ordoñez), the Venezuelan shortstop who needed a change of scene to become a star (Marco Scutaro vs. Carlos Guillen), the third baseman who had the disappointing year at the plate obscured by the superb year in the field (Eric Chavez vs. Brandon Inge), the not-very-worrisome base running speed (both teams stole 60-some-odd bases, Detroit in 100 tries, Oakland in 81), the big-strikeout offensive threat (Nick Swisher vs. Curtis Granderson), the ridiculous rally towels (evidently, the marketing departments get their salaries cut when someone suggests an original idea) and the laconic-to-the-point-of-phlegmatic manager (Ken Macha vs. Jim Leyland).
But there are also differences, like the Mach 4-fastball relief pitcher (Joel Zumaya vs., well, nobody), the crafty uber-veteran (Todd Jones vs., well, nobody), the red-haired switch-hitter off the bench (Bobby Kielty vs., well, nobody), the start-to-finish ratio (the Tigers started brilliantly and gimped to the end vs. the A's spotting the American League its customary two months before taking their talent seriously) and the fact that neither team has been this far in a good long time -- the A's since 1992, the Tigers since '87.
Oh, some folks liked the A's back in March, and good on those wise guys for seeing what the A's themselves kept obscured for the first two months of the season. But nobody believed in the Tigers except as the warm and fuzzy story of the summer, and everyone dived off the wagon when Detroit lost 31 of its final 50 games and blew the Central Division title. Nobody trusted the A's until they had their typical July and August, and closed winning 32 of their last 50.
So what we have, ultimately, is a series so free of preconceptions that the first person you see who claims to know how it will play out will need a good and forceful beating.
There are no overtold story lines (see Alex Rodriguez), none of the angst of profligate spending (the Tigers spent about $80 million, and Ordoñez and Ivan Rodriguez took in about a third of that) on either side (the A's spent about $66 million, of which Kendall and Chavez took in about a third), and none of the shrieks and bellows of a city that claims either team as its first love (the A's most contend both with the hideous Raiders and the annoying Giants, while the Tigers cope with the unbearable Lions and the shadows of the Pistons and Red Wings).
And best of all, there will be no tedious stories of long-suffering fans enduring generations of heartbreak and all that other fodder for oh-shut-your-festering-yaps screams from the other end of the tavern. The Tigers won a World Series 22 years ago, the A's 17, so there are no curses, no horror stories of getting close and then being crushed by cruel fate. The Tigers went 22 years without a championship because they were mostly lousy, and the A's went 17 years because they alternated between alphabetizing the paperclips and finding fascinating ways to blow playoff series. Sorry, but there isn't much sex/violence/rock'n'roll backstory in either of these two teams.
They are just two really good baseball teams who look alike in some ways and not in others, each trying to get to four before the other guy. And even if the TV ratings don't make other networks go into chest spasms (and they won't), it will be the best baseball Oakland has seen in a long time. Oh, and don't get too exasperated when Fox shows the Campaneris-LaGrow clip about 16,000 times. It's all they really have, and they have to vamp just as long as the rest of us.
 
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