A brief post-mortem

The Cardinals are a tough team, battle-tested, and cannot be ruled out in the battle with Detroit. The Tigers will be prohibitive favorites, given the way they ran through the American League playoffs, but the Cards went toe to toe with the NL’s best squad and ended up the last team standing.

I don’t like the Cardinals. I don’t like Tony LaRussa and I don’t like the Cardinals’ core players. But you can’t dismiss what they’ve done.

As a Mets fan, it would be easy to view the season as a failure, but the team won 97 games and came within a hit of the World Series, just two years after losing 91. That’s a 26-win shift that’s been accomplished through the shrewd roster-building of Omar Minaya. Yes, he had cash at his disposal, but he built a team. But now we have to move on and plug the team’s holes: A couple of starting pitchers (let’s get Barry Zito signed, bring back Glavine and move Heilmann into the rotation; then we can see if Oliver Perez’s immense talent can be harnessed, if John Maine can be a servicable starter, and let’s find another arm); a number-six hitter; platoon Lastings Milledge with Shawn Green. Then we go from there.

It was fun while it lasted.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet