World Series matchup

It’s been a year since the last World Series, give or take, so it’s reasonable to have forgotten a few things. Fox still promotes its new shows incessantly (even for Jack Bauer of ‘24′) getting flogged this hard probably qualifies as cruel and unusual. Hearing Tim McCarver dissect the latest baseball slang (they call that slider a ‘cement mixer’ ) is still as painful as listening to your dad explain rap music. But watching two very good baseball teams go at it in October remains a blast, all peripheral silliness aside. Game One of the World Series, a tense, well-played 3-2 Philadelphia Phillies win over the Tampa Bay Rays, demonstrated that.

The Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell is settling in for a fun Series.  Why rush, like all these other recent too-brief Octobers Why not have an old-fashioned Series that evolves and polishes its plot twists, Boswell writes.  After all, this pairing is special in its incongruity.  A lovely soft breeze, called disbelief, wafted across Tampa Bay as this battle began between the franchise of 10,000 losses and the team so damned it had to change its name to get the Devil out. Some Series begin amid anticipation or palpitations. This one was bathed in incredulity.

While the favored Rays will be playing from behind when the series resumes Thursday night, St. Petersburg Times columnist John Romano encourages the team’s fans not to panic.  It is true the Rays have something to fear today, Romano allows.  They have not only fallen behind in the Series, but they have also ceded their homefield advantage for the time being. But, you have seen this before. Just 12 days earlier, as a matter of fact. The Rays were so devastated by their offensive shortcomings against the Red Sox in that first ALCS game that they went on to outscore Boston 31-13 while winning the next three games. In other words, Tampa Bay has been through this already. If we have learned nothing else about these Rays as summer has turned into fall, it is that this team does not scare easily.

It probably says something about Philadelphia’s fans that, in the Allentown Morning Call, Keith Groller is, like Romano with Rays fans, trying to soothe Phillies loyalists after their team won.  Maybe if this was the regular season, the fans would fret this morning over the fact that Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell were a combined 0-for-12 with seven Ks, Groller writes.  Maybe Bud from Bensalem or Matt from Manayunk would be calling WIP this morning, griping about leaving 11 on base or the fact that the Phils were 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position. But the bottom line is they won and they won because they have perhaps baseball’s best clutch pitcher in Cole Hamels and a steady 1-2 punch in Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge ready for the late innings.

After the Phillies young ace served up his fourth brilliant effort of the 2008 postseason, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bob Ford seconds Groller’s assessment of Hamels as baseball’s best clutch pitcher.  Hamels, Ford writes, pitched as if this were just another regular-season game, easing through his fluid motion to keep Tampa Bay off-balance with his mixture of fastballs and change-ups. He didn’t have his best material, but made the best use of what he had. If it seemed routine, go out to start the World Series, go seven, give up just two runs, amid the clatter of the cowbells and the general strangeness of life in an indoor stadium that has its own aquarium, you have to understand that it wasn’t, even for Hamels [But] on a night when the other team was always lurking, Hamels rose to the moment like a ray to squid.

While the Rays have a few days before they’ll be confronted with Hamels again, the Tampa Tribune’s Joe Henderson thinks the team needs a win in Game Two.  It simply will not do to lose both games here at the Trop before heading out to Philly this weekend, Henderson states.  So there will be a distinct air of urgency to the whole affair tonight. But the Rays have the edge in the pitching matchup.  James Shields over Philly’s Brett Myers and you couldn’t say that Wednesday.