Starting tonight, the Boston Red Sox will play the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
As you may have already heard, the Red Sox and Cardinals will be meeting in the Fall Classic for the fourht time.
In 1946, Stan Musial's club beat Ted Williams' in seven games. Bob Gibson's Cardinals did the same to Carl Yastrzemski's Red Sox in 1967. It took until 2004 for Boston to finally claim victory over St. Louis in the World Series.
Unlike the Red Sox four-game sweep of the Cardinals in 2004 - which, after the Red Sox defeated the hated Yankees in an epic ALCS, was not unlike the U.S. Hockey team beating Finland for the gold medal at the 1980 Olympics - this should be a tremendous series.
Both teams have excellent pitching, deep lineups (although the Red Sox have a slight edge in that department but more on that later), dominating bullpens, and good managers.
The difference will be home field advantage. Having the extra game at Fenway Park will allow the Red Sox to employ their normal middle of the order and the 1-through-5 of Jacoby Ellsbury, Shane Victorino, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, and Mike Napoli will do enough damage to deliver Boston its third World Series title in ten years and its first in Boston - this series is going to a Game 6 - since Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States.
As for my World Series MVP?
I'll go with Xander Bogaerts.
I'm sure Ted Williams would have enjoyed the 21-year-old hit and he'd sure love to see him help beat the Cardinals.
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