If it were completely up to my thinking, the year of 2006 has been, well, pretty uneventful.  The St. Louis Cardinals have, well, should I say “outlasted” the rest of major league baseball.  They have just won the World Series in 5 games, and just 3 weeks ago were fighting for the final playoff berth going into the last game of the season.  The Cincinnati Reds absolutely fell apart during the last month and a half of the season, and they still only finished 3 games back of the Cards in the final standings.

The Cardinals 83 wins are the fewest amount of wins by a World Champion team in the modern era. (Modern Era = 162 game season), and it’s not really a big surprise to me that they did it.  The National League was known by most to be the weakest league in baseball, and the NL’s #4 seed (last) beats an injury hampered NY Mets squad everyone thought would make the Series easily in 7 games.  Detroit blew up in the early season, racing out to a double digit lead in the division early on, and holding that lead for a the entire season, until the last game of the season when the upstart Minnesota Twins took them out by 1 game for the Division Title.  The collapse by Detroit was of epic proportions.  They limped into the playoffs, with their heads down, as did the Cardinals who lost 9 of their last 11, and barely held on for a half-game win over a Houston Astros squad that had NO business of being involved with playoff talk with even 3 weeks to go.

So, why not?  Why not let the Tigers dismantle the mighty NY Yankees 3 games to 1 in the first round, and annihilate the Oakland A’s, sweeping the ALCS 4-0…….and why not let them wait several days before the NLCS is decided, the Cards taking a tough Game 7 from the Mets, setting up the first world series matchup between 2 teams with losing records after the all-star break.

Many newspapers had headlines that read like such:  “Cards shock the world”.  But tell me.  Did they really shock you?  Didn’t we already see this kind of collapse by Detroit once this year?  Most teams involved in professional sports don’t get a second chance to collapse again.  Detroit took full advantage of it, and reminded the rest of the MLB why they hadn’t won their own division in the first place.

So, anyway, what I’m getting at is that the St. Louis Cardinals, yeah go ahead and celebrate, your fans deserve it, and hell you deserve it too after the buttwhoopin you took by the hands of the Red Sox 2 years ago.  But for the rest of us, Reds fans, Pirate fans, Angel fans, Dodger fans…….it’s really no big surprise.

2006 has not been a banner year for sports.  The USA Basketball Team proved once again that we couldn’t compete for Gold in the World Championships.  The Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl in one of the worst officiated games I can remember in a very long time, and they are off to a superb 2-5 start this season, and probably at this point will NOT make the playoffs to defend their crown.  The Miami Heat won an NBA title, in classic comeback fashion over heavily favored Dallas, a title their fans may never see again for many years with the age on that squad.  And the NHL Champs were the Carolina Hurricanes, and yeah, who?  The NCAA Basketball champ was the Florida Gators, and I bet you half the people reading this couldn’t tell me who they beat in the finals………………………..(it was UCLA), and once again who is George Mason?  Does anyone remember JJ Reddick?  Or Adam Morrison?  What about the Davis Cup?  LoL, why cant we beat Europe if we have the best golfers in the world here in America?

The one highlight this year could be the college football season, and the true national championship game (No, not the BCS Championship on Jan 8th), the Ohio State – Michigan Game.

Here’s to the Cards, Heat, Steelers, Canes, USA BBall, USA Golf, the Duke University Lacrosse team, the Gators, George Mason, and JJ Reddick.  Thanks for the 2006 memories, or lack thereof………..