Annals of Sports Self-Pity

As Rob’s recent post notes, the presence of one team that hasn’t played in a World Series since its inception in 1962 and another that hasn’t won since the Wilson administration has generated a lot of discussion about cursed sports teams. The greatest pain, however, is not a team that’s really bad–when you have no hope, there’s less to be crushed. This reminds me of a study published in the 1999 Big Bad Baseball Annual ranking teams by their number of close finishes versus their successful seasons. It was listed under the Angels team comment, as the author was sure that they would finish first (evidently, this is no obsolete.) They were third; the Giants second, Milwaukee fourth. (The Cubs, because they won the division the only two years of the 80s their team was better than atrocious, don’t rank particularly high.) The #1 team, however, should have been clear: none other than mes amours, The Expos. And the hard numbers don’t tell the whole depressing take.

The Expos had a formidable talent base in the late 70s and early 80s, but in 1979 and 1980 lost a pennant race on the last weekend of the year to the eventual World Champion (in the latter year, the deciding game was lost when Dick Williams decided to pitch to Mike Schmidt with a runner on and first base open in the top of the 11th with the immortal Pat McCormack on deck. The result is currently orbiting Neptune.) In 1981, they won the mini-series, but lost a deciding game 5 of the NLCS on a homer in the top of the ninth by Rick Monday. (During the strike, they actually played the game on the radio–and I listened. You don’t become an Expos fan without a lot of masochist in you.) They slowly squandered the Carter/Raines/Dawson/Wallach/Rogers years in bitter disappointment, under the hapless direction of Jim Fanning and Bill Virdon, finally recovering under Buck Rodgers but with considerably less talent. In 1987 and ’89, they occupied first place for significant periods but lost (and the latter year was costly, as they traded Randy Johnson as part of the pennant race.) With the hiring of Felipe Alou, they began to build into an excellent team again–Dan Duquette does a lot of dumb things, but he made a series of exceptional trades during this time. (It could be argued in retrospect that my argument that he was wrong to trade Delino DeShields for Pedro Martinez was not sound.) in 1992 and ’93 they again lost pennant races in September. In 1994, of course, they were the best team in baseball…when the World Series was cancelled. After that, Expos history was a long death march as ownership decided to strip-mine the team, although they lost the wildcard on the last weekend again in 1996. And, of course, the team has finally expired, meaning that for the Expos fan the coitus interruptus is permanent. So, to all you other self-pitying fans, I say you’re pikers!

To return to something that at least a small percentage of out readers would actually care about, there’s the question of this World Series. I still have some doubts about the White Sox, but one thing I didn’t take sufficiently into account is that they do have a lot of power. (This is particularly important in the post-season, because the better the pitcher, the harder it is to put together long offensive sequence.) I wouldn’t trust Garland against a really good offense, but the Astros don’t have a really good offense, and otherwise the White Sox’s pitching depth balances out the Astros’ superior front line (although I’d much rather have the ‘stros bullpen.) If Clemens were clearly healthy, I think the series would be dead even; since he isn’t, I’ll say White Sox in 6. That’s fine with me; they’ve probably suffered enough.