by Eric » Fri May 24, 2002 7:59 pm
Baseball:
I guess all the original baseball teams have won. It is kind of hard to feel sorry for recent expansion teams like Tampa Bay or Colorado which have never won but which haven't suffered anywhere near as long as established franchises which did win, long long ago, like the Cubbies and Red Sox. (I wonder, is there anyone alive who remembers the Cubs winning?) And, of course, recent expansion teams like Florida and Arizona have won.
It is frightening to contemplate, however, that Houston is an expansion franchise that has been around for forty years, all in one place too, so I might lean toward the poor Astros - even unlucky in their choice of sponsors. But I can't remember much about that team. Maybe the Astrodome deflated any hitters but where then were all the great Houston pitchers taking advantage?
My vote goes to Seattle. They had an excellent team in the nineties and have kissed three probable Hall of Famers goodbye and still kept winning. I would have preferred they beat out the Yanks last year rather than Arizona - but you have to admit, the strategy of putting two great pitchers in the rotation and hoping to get to the postseason where they'd be pitching about half the time was a stroke of genius.
Here's a depressing thought -- with thirty teams, even if every team took a turn winning, that means a team only gets to win every thirty years. So there are a lot of fans who are going to live and die without seeing their team winning, seems to me.
Baseball:
I guess all the original baseball teams have won. It is kind of hard to feel sorry for recent expansion teams like Tampa Bay or Colorado which have never won but which haven't suffered anywhere near as long as established franchises which did win, long long ago, like the Cubbies and Red Sox. (I wonder, is there anyone alive who remembers the Cubs winning?) And, of course, recent expansion teams like Florida and Arizona have won.
It is frightening to contemplate, however, that Houston is an expansion franchise that has been around for forty years, all in one place too, so I might lean toward the poor Astros - even unlucky in their choice of sponsors. But I can't remember much about that team. Maybe the Astrodome deflated any hitters but where then were all the great Houston pitchers taking advantage?
My vote goes to Seattle. They had an excellent team in the nineties and have kissed three probable Hall of Famers goodbye and still kept winning. I would have preferred they beat out the Yanks last year rather than Arizona - but you have to admit, the strategy of putting two great pitchers in the rotation and hoping to get to the postseason where they'd be pitching about half the time was a stroke of genius.
Here's a depressing thought -- with thirty teams, even if every team took a turn winning, that means a team only gets to win every thirty years. So there are a lot of fans who are going to live and die without seeing their team winning, seems to me.