What team is your team like? Part I

Yassar Arafat and Ringo Starr.  Separated at birth.

So .... I was talking to someone recently and did the, "you know who that team reminds me of" thing.  You know what I'm talking about?  "They're just like the 2011 Grisslies....the '09 Rounders....the '13 Draft Kings."

Sports, even ones as rickety as ours, are based on comparisons.  The best arm since....the fastest runner since....etc.  It can quite literally go on forever.  So I start thinking to myself, which team in the majors would each of our league teams match up with and why?

Now its taking a while to put this together, so I'm going to break it into parts.

Beer Bros. 1970 Orioles. Why the O's?  Well the 70's were the decade of the dynasty.  The Big Red Machine out of Cincinnati won 2 World Series, the Yankees 2, The Pirates 2 and the nasty group in Oakland won 3 in a row.  But starting the whole thing off were the Baltimore Orioles who won 1 World Series in 1970.   Okay, lots of teams in our league have won 1 championship and there are NO dynasties, so how does this make sense?  Well the O's in the decade of the 70's had the 2nd best winning percentage in all of baseball despite the single championship.  Kind of like the Beer Bros., who find a way to win a lot of games.

Master Batters - 1969 Mets.  In the grand old game, the Mets are still considered a new team by many having been around since only 1962.  I know.  But in '69, they were VERY new in everyone's eyes.  From 1962-1968 they averaged losing over a 102 games per season.  That is epic bad.  That's like the Grisslie lost season times seven bad.  It makes not winning a Stanley cup for nearly 50 years seem not so bad.  They were so bad that legendary Yankee Casey Stengle who was the manager of the Mets was quoted as saying, "Can't anyone here play this game"?  And the better quote, "Don't cut my throat, I want to do it myself later".  But this isn't the Master Batters, they don't lose like the Mets. Nope, they win like the 1969 Mets it would seem.  Out of nowhere, the Mets won 100 games with a bunch of nobody's in the field.  The Miracle Mets.  The Amazin' Mets.  Now they may have had the best young pitching staff ever with Jerry Koosman, Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver and Tug McGraw out of the pen.  But they caught the baseball world off guard and won the world series.  See the parallel?

Draft Kings - 1993 Phillies.  This won't take long.  John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, Pete Incavilia, Dave Hollins, Darren Daulton, Curt Schilling, Matt Williams,   Compare that with Stike, Derryl Gaudet, Ingo Bartens, Greg Aucoin, Chuck Cragg, Steve Porter, Dan Routledge, Blaine Richards.  They play hard.  They post game hard.  And they both wear red.

Dodge City Rounders - 1985 Cardinals.  Huh?  Ya, at least to me they are.  Now the 1985 Cardinals did something that you may not realize and that is set the record for stolen bases in a season.  Willie McGee, Tommy Herr, Vince Coleman, Ozzie Smith and Andy Van Slyke all had more than 30 steals that year.  How fast were they?  John Tudor and Joaquin Andujar, starting pitchers who both had 21 wins on the season, had stolen bases.  So are the Rounders THAT fast?  Not really.  But led by Muirhead and Gayle, they are stupid fast for this league and they are filled with a roster of 1st to 3rd speed.  No bobbles in the outfield against this track team.

Rusty Rebels - 1993 A's.  Hugh and I have been getting along great!  Lets end that here.  The Rusty Rebels won the championship last year.  The 1992 A's had been .500 or better and went to multiple world series before playing the perennially playoff disappointing Blue Jays in the 1992 ALCS.  Toronto split at home and headed to the shadows of Oakland Alemedia County Coliseum for 3 games.  Toronto surprising won game 3 despite being out-hit as Guzman beat Ron Darling.  Then game 4, with no one feeling safe or secure about the Jays despite being up 2-1 in the series.  Jack Morris vs. Bob Welch.  Toronto is down 6-1 going into the top of the 8th.  No team in the 130 years of professional baseball had EVER come back from 5 down in the 8th in a post season ball game.  No one.  Never.  The Jays counted 3 in the 8th and the Oakland Dynasty died from the game tying 2 run home run in the 9th by Roberto Alomar.  Derek Bell (remember him?) would score the winning run in the 11th but it had been over for 2 innings already.  Wow.  That was a long story; but, what's the relate to the Rebels?  After Oakland was squashed, they would finish last the next season and not see .500 for another six years.  Just saying.

Hurtin' Units - 1991 Braves..  This isn't a long standing thing, just a 'this year' impression.  So, I think its really important to recognize just how bad the Units were last year.  In our 2nd or 3rd game of the year we scored 7 in one inning and Joel Hodge (former Hurtin' Unit), said, "wow, I've never been on a team that did that before!".  Bad.  I know tragic years and their's was painful.  But the 1990 Braves lost 97 games and had a winning percentage of .401.  Terrible.  The 1989 team had the identical record.  The 1988 team mixed it up by losing 107.  In fact, it had been 7 years since they even sniffed .500.  However the '91 Braves went from worst to first and got to the World Series against the Twins which finished with the best game 7 ever played.  The Units are starting to look like this team.  Worst to first COULD happen!

Okay, busily writing chapter II, have a fun week of ball!