White Sox Win World Series

Or so I have been told. I fell asleep during the game last night and did not know about who won till I turned SportCenter on. That's three out of four games that I fell asleep for in this Series. That's a problem (not for me but for MLB).

If a fan like me can't stay awake during games that end past midnight - isn't that a sign to MLB that they are starting the games too late? Doesn't that help explain why the ratings for the World Series keep slipping into the toilet. I mean will even one game from this Series crack the Neilson's top 10 for the week?

And don't give me the West Coast crap. More baseball fans are on the East Coast and early starts on the West Coach just mean that kids (and thus a new generation of baseball fans) would have a chance to watch the games.

Anyway - enough with the rant because I think I'm preaching to the choir here.

The Stats boxscore tells me it was a 1-0 game with the only run coming in the 8th on a Jermaine Dye single off Brad Lidge (again).

Its too bad that this Series will go down in the books as a sweep because it was 4 hard fought games and a sweep makes it look like the Astros didn't compete. The White Sox only outscored the Astros by 6 runs in the Series.

I think the key to the Series was how the White Sox basically pitched around Lance Berkman who is one of the top 5 hitters in baseball. Last night Berkman was walked 3 times and the White Sox dared Morgan Ensberg to beat them. Now Ensberg is a good hitter in his own right (36 HR and 101 RBI this season) but he's no Lance Berkman and last night's 0-4 with 2 strikeouts and 6 men left on base is as much to blame for the loss as Brad Lidge giving up the winning run in the 8th. As a Red Sox fan this reinforces the need to keep the Ortiz/Ramirez 1-2 punch intact.

For the Astros this will down as the Series of "could've, would've, should've's." They should have done a suicide squeeze the other night. They could have hit better with men in scoring position (I don't know what their RISP average was but I'm sure its mega-ugly) and they would have closed the roof if they knew they were going to lose with it open.

Picking up miscellaneous World Series nuggets:

- Yeah now AJ Pierzynski has a ring - doesn't make him any less a jackass.

- From Jason Stark: "They played six road games in this postseason -- against teams (Boston, Anaheim and Houston) that finished a combined 69 games over .500 at home this season -- and won all six."

- From ESPN: "Important Stat - 15. That's how many innings the Astros went without scoring since Lane's eighth-inning, game-tying double in Game 3." (Personally the important stat for me was the 300 clams I lost betting on Roy Oswalt in game 3.)

- Before the Series began - the odds of a White Sox sweep were 12-1

- The best one-paragraph summary of the Series goes to SI's John Donovan:

Yeah, it was close, if you look at runs (20-14, Sox). But that's about the only place it was close. The Sox out-pitched the Astros (2.63 ERA to 4.58), way out-hit them (.286 to .203), out-slugged them (six homers to three), out-clutched them (who came through for the Astros?) and even, for you managing mavens, out-maneuvered Houston.

- If I were to suggest a theme song for the Astros for this Series it would be Whipping Post by the Alman Brothers.