It was. It was pretty neat to watch.
Pretty neat in that it made the last day of the season that much more fun -- National and American Leagues mirroring four-team / two-game, down-to-the-wire contests for playoff contention. Nice to get the midwest and southern teams involved, great parts of our country, great pedigree.
But it's St. Louis, and we're not huge Tony LaRussa fans. Great success he's had in his career, but the dyed hair, the occasionally abrasive personality, the somewhat tweaked logic, they just don't appeal to our world. Lawyers / managers don't particularly interest us, and we're even less enthralled with lawyers with DUI's. We also do not dig on the Mark McGwire scene, and LaRussa's loyalty to him makes it that much worse. Sorry, that's just where we are in life. Call us unhip.
We're also not buyers of the Albert Pujols aura. Terrific, proven player, has his World Series ring and we're very happy for him. But when a player complains that the MVP shouldn't be awarded to a player on a losing team yet accepted his in the same circumstances, we do not swoon. We do not relish hearing God being brought into why "The Machine" had a 4-for-4 night and drove in six runs. If he has a sense of humor we haven't seen it and the whole schtick is so pious it's like Sammy Sosa was saved down by the riverside.
As far as the Atlanta Braves are concerned, our favorite thing about them is their radio announcer Don Sutton who can spend a game educating us on prime southernisms and how to use them. On the field we've always yawned through their exploits -- back when they were in the NL West, when Joe Torre was their manager, when the holy trinity of modern starting rotations ruled their mound, even when Bobby Cox was getting ejected, a Braves game was like meat loaf for dinner, and no matter how you dressed it up in World Series seventh games or extra-inning league championship grinders, it was still meat loaf. When you added owner Ted Turner's mouth and Jane Fonda's presence, it was meat loaf with Fritos and red sauce.
Obvious exception: Hank Aaron. But even he was quiet, laid-back, unassuming in a way of humble greatness as opposed to achieved flavorlessness. His talent got to you before he did.
Today in Atlanta there is no Glavine, Maddux, or Smoltz, no Cox and Mazzone pulling strings from the bench, no all-star-loaded lineups where the bench players were all-stars as well. Today it's former bench coach / new manager Fredi Gonzalez, who's already brought his questionable decision-making to Turner Field, and his pitching coach Roger McDowell, earlier this year suspended for using homophobic slurs in an aggressive pre-game confrontation with fans. We admire Chipper Jones for his talent and longevity and wish his knees did not bother him so, but we sympathize with former catcher Mike Piazza who used to greet Chipper at the plate with a "Hello, Lawrence" because he couldn't deal with a grown man being called "Chipper." We tired of the Jason Heyward hype last year and were bored this year by the expected drop-off from his rookie year numbers. Brian McCann is great to watch, he does well with a quality pitching staff, but for us, it's not enough. It's still meat loaf.
Even more loafy, the Braves were fighting for their lives against the Philadelphia Phillies, another team whose mere uniforms get us sleepy, while the Cardinals battled another team long-exiled from interesting, the Houston Astros. Contrast that NL pile-up with the AL rumble that starred New York, Boston, Joe Maddon's upstart Rays, and the Baltimore Orioles, a dismally disappointing team in 2011 who spent September beating up playoff hopefuls like Boston, Anaheim, and Tampa Bay.
Don't get us wrong, we're still watching and enjoying. It's just different.
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