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Fall Classic News, etc.

© Bryan Walker

Its time for the Fall Classic. Not only are we seeing the Yankees in the World Series again, we now get to enjoy the Mets in it as well. Baseball officials are drooling at the publicity that this series is getting. Fortunately for baseball and unfortunately for the fans, a large portion of the media is based around New York. However, if you’re a baseball fan outside of New York (and there are plenty of us), you probably feel no special affinity for this meeting of New York teams. Now that the Mets have won game three at the time this article was written, maybe we’ll get to see a good series.

News and Notes 1. Dollar-store Cardinals Is it possible for the Cardinals to sign any more players at a discount? After signing Mark McGwire and Jim Edmonds to less-than-market-value contract, Darryl Kile has signed a 3 year deal worth $22.5 million. Kile won 20 games this season with an ERA of 3.91. He became the staff ace and the leader of the pitching staff. He could have gone out on the market and probably landed at least $12-13 million per season, but he wanted to stay in St. Louis. Give credit to general manager Walt Jocketty and the fans in St. Louis because they have players who are unselfish and love to play there.

2. The Roger Clemen Saga Roger Clemens threw the bat at Mike Piazza. Let’s get that statement clear from the start. It may have been unintentional but he did it. The most interesting part of this story was not why Piazza didn’t start a fist-fight, or why the Mets didn’t retaliate. What’s interesting is why Clemens would do such an outrageous thing during a World Series. Here are his excuses:  He wanted to throw the bat "towards our on-deck circle, where our batboys were at."  He "thought it was the ball."  He “didn't know if it was the bat or the ball." Really, the only real reason that seems believable is that Clemens just lost it. He was so emotional about the game and Piazza in particular that he lost control. He should just stand up and say it.

3. Body Armor and Long Games The two things that MLB official are going to work on over the winter are the length of games and the body armor that batters wear. Baseball has become too offensive, and part of the problem is that many hitters wear so much protection at they are unafraid at the plate. Pitchers need to be able to intimidate a hitter to be effective. Outlawing the armor is a change that needs to be made. As far as the length of games, here’s an article about the changes being considered: http://www.ohio.com/bj/sports/indians/do...

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