That might be true in a technical sense, in that I think a lot of sox fans would only be peeved or tiffed if the Cubs won, and not quite rise all the way to pissed. But I think the percentage of the pissed would be pretty high, regardless of what they say.

I can honestly say that I felt not a whit of emotion when the Sox won, except that I was pissed because people were honking their horns in Champaign, where maybe 1 out of 20 people are Sox fans (I am, in many ways, a crotchety old man.)

See this is what I dont get. You were indifferent when the Sox won in 2005. Why then, would you assume we would be all worked up and mad if the Cubs won this year? I dont get it.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Because Cub fans are the good guys and Sox fans are the bad guys. Where have you been??

Frank, you are full of shit. You are already upset that the Cubs have done as well as they have so far. You feel the need to post crap here in the Cubs section, just because it grates on you that Cub fans are happy and celebrating their teams winning ways. When the Cubs win it all, you will be beyond pissed off and I will be lovin life even more than I already am. I was very tempted to call today, after seeing how much reaction this was getting on this message board. It would probably get things really going on the air too. But things were too busy at work. But seeing what reactions this has triggered, I think it would probably make for some entertaining radio.

Keyser-yours is a fine observation.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Elmhurst Steve,
Let me talk as an average Sox fan. I won't be upset if the Cubs win the World Series. In fact, I predicted the Cubs to make it to the World Series this year before the season started. Any thought of worrying about that left in 2005 when I knew that I wouldn't have to hear from Cubs fans "We ended the long drought first!".

You, on the other hand, with your completely stupid arguments trying to re-write history about a playoff run where the White Sox lost a total of one(as in two sweeps and one victory by 4-1) has clearly shown that it eats at you that the White Sox won. You can just tell that you are looking for any small excuse to discount the championship. I highly doubt you would say the same things about the Yankees, Diamondbacks, Red Sox, or other past champions of the 10 years. You have chosen to cherry pick a few stupid little reasons why the Sox championship is "tainted". I am sure this will come with a strong rebuttal about how you were rooting for the Sox but you've shown that your baseball reality is shaped by either an extreme bias or a lack of understanding of how baseball(and any sport in general) works.

Now it is not inherently wrong to display the blatant bias that you have. I have my biases in sports too but I am not naive enough to try and convince myself that I don't have them and I understand that the ultimate answer to any argument is either who scored more or who hung up the banner. Even a team like St. Louis, who clearly was not the best team last year in the regular season, deserves the accolades associated with a champion because they were able to beat every opponent put in front of them in the playoffs.

The bottom line is that the White Sox were the best team in 2005 because when it mattered most, they were better than everyone they faced. Any argument in disagreement with that is a sign of being a meatball fan or a fan with no understanding of how sports work.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Boilermaker Rick-what a dumbass you are. The Cardinals didn't win it last year, the Red Sox did. The Cardinals won the year before. But they were barely over .500 in the regular season and I would not consider them a great team either. They were very fortunate to get some breaks and get hot at just the right time. But they were by no means the best team in baseball 2 years ago, whether they won the series or not.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Steve, you really must have shit for brains. How can you say that the Cardinals, the WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS, were not the best team in baseball? And don't say one fucking word about thier regular season record. The Tigers had one of, if not the, best record in the AL, and the Cardinals beat them in 5 games. You just love to make excuses for any team that is not the Cubs. People on the board here gave me shit for being a meatball, most of which I deserved. I think you have re-written the definition of what being a meatball fan really is because I honestly could not say nor believe most of the shit you spew if I tried. I could not force myself to be that fucking stupid.

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You are a meatball. First off I did say that the Cards had a record in the regular season barely over .500 just have someone read the post very slowly to you. Also, if you think that just because a team wins a World Series, that they were the best team that year, you are just stupid-which you regilarly demonstrate in your posts here. Sure, give them credit for winning. But just because a team wins it, doesn't mean to me that they were the best team, too many other factors including injuries, umpire calls or one team just being hot and another cold in a given series, can tilt the series in one way vs the other. The Cardinals were really not a real good team in 2006. But in the playoffs, they were able to pitch Carpenter enough and Jeff Suppan pitched his best ball of his career in those playoffs. Hell, the Brewers are still overpaying him based on what he did late in that season and in the playoffs. But he and that whole Cardinal team were hot at the right time. But if you look at the whole 2006 season, the Cardinals were not even the second or third best team, much less the best.
I have no problem, giving credit to teams that deserve it. I think the Red Sox WERE the best team in Baseball last year. I believe that the Patriots deseved to be crowned Super Bowl champions, same as the 85 Bears and the 49er teams that won Super bowls. I love to see the best teams win. The Red Wings who just won the Stanley cup, The 6 time Bulls championship teams, the Magic led laker teams with Worthy and Jabbar, definitely were the best and deserved to win the championships they won. It's just a shame when the best teams in a given season, whether because of injury, bad officiating (Don Denkinger type stuff) or bad luck, lose to teams, that clearly were not the best.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Ah, ok. I understand now why you have to have that mentality. If you think like that, I guess you can say the Cubs were the best team in baseball in '84 or '03. Even though they won jack and shit, I guess they were the best team, right?

You're about as sharp as a beach ball.

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Frank, you seem to lack the requisite intelligence to understand reason. So I have nothing more to say to you. you are not worth talking to.

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Go Cubs!!!!

I don't understand how a team that wins the World Series is NOT considered the best in baseball. Do you get a ring for best regular season record?

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My mistake. A little drinky last night. It still doesn't change the point.

You really seem to misunderstand how team sports work. The champion is not decided in the regular season, only the fat trimmed by removing teams. They have a championship tournament. Every team knows that you win or go home. Every team understands the rules and plays as such. There is added pressure and importance put on games.

The White Sox may not be an all time great team. I don't see anyone arguing they were. They were however the BEST team in MLB that year.

The best team will not lose to any team in a 5 or 7 game series. The scoreboard doesn't lie.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I disagree here. The Sox were probably the best team in baseball in 2005, but you'll never convince me that the Cardinals were on of the best teams in baseball in 2006, regardless of their championship. There's simply too much white noise in a five or even seven game series.

I believe that, all things being equal, the team with the best record at the end of the regular season would beat whatever team ends up being the champions if they were allowed to play a series of significant length (I'm saying, like, 50 games.) That's assuming that the team that won the WS didn't have major players injured during the season or something like that accounting for their improvement.

If the MLB playoffs allowed for the worst team to make the playoffs as well, even that team would win a five game series every couple of years, and they'd make and win the WS every couple of decades.

The Cardinals have a ring and a trophy that says they were the best team in 2006. Case closed.

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Why? They won the tournament at the end of the year. That doesn't mean they were the best team in baseball. They just happened to win the championship. More times than not the best team wins the championship, but not always.

As a fan, I'd rather have the championship team and not have the "best team" than the other way around. But that doesn't mean that the best team always wins the championship. Sample sizes, people.

2001 mariners won 118 games or something like that. Clearly the best regular sesason team in baseball, but they did not even make it to the WS, let alone win it. The argument could be made, pretty well, that the M's were the 3rd best team in the league that year, behind the WS Champ Diamondbacks, and AL Champ Yankees. The Cards in '06 maybe didn't have the most regular season wins (The 2005 White Sox didn't either, they had 99, Cards had 100) but for baseball they were the best team. World Series Champion to me, to the vast majority of fans, and to players and owners alike, denotes the best team.

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The WS winner is always
Very good
Very lucky
Very healthy
Very deep

I don't always think the WS winner is the best team in baseball. Usually, they are, but the '06 Cardinals got hot at the right time and the other teams picked a bad time to scuffle.
Nothing about the '05 Sox to quibble about. They were the best in baseball. Had the season ended a month earlier when they were scuffling, the story might be different, but there's a few sayings about the merits of "IF"

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

The '05 Sox were the best team (one game shy of the Cardinals in the regular season means shit) and were also very good, lucky, healthy and deep.

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Stupidity irritates the crap outta me... and yes, I irritate myself far too often.

To date, the Cubs have also been very good, but have gotten thier share of luck too. Recent example- playing Colorado without Tulowitzski, Holliday, and Hawpe.

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Were the Giants really better than the Patriots last year? They were for the one game that it really mattered, but were they overall a better team?

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No.

Absofuckinglutely. Missing Webb against the DBacks didn't hurt either. May they continue to have such good fortunes through the end of October. I couldn't give a shit if they have the best record or not. I just want them to win the WS.

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Stupidity irritates the crap outta me... and yes, I irritate myself far too often.

I would, but just so I could throw shit at elmhurt steve about the Cub lone title in a century being tainted

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Stupidity irritates the crap outta me... and yes, I irritate myself far too often.

Remember that the Giants almost beat the Pats in the regular season and that the Patriots from the first half of the NFL season was not the same as the Patriots from the second half of the season.

When it mattered, the Giants were the better team. I think last year's NFL season is a great example why the most dominant regular season team isn't always the best team. The Giants played the Pats very tough in a meaningless game for them and then beat them in the Super Bowl.

There is no reason to believe that if the Pats and Giants played ten times, that the Giants wouldn't win at least 5 of those games.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Too-towsand and six BEARSSSS.

Argument over.

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My Maserati does 186.

I cant stand sports fans that think like you guys, who would love to hand out regular season championships. In the name of consistency you must be big BCS-supporters. They have a playoff tournament to decide the best team in that sport that year. Case closed. You guys have ABSOLUTELY NO ARGUMENT in this case. It's absurd, unless an extraordinary injury like Kobe getting hurt for the rest of the Finals or something happens, but thats not the case in any of the teams we are arguing.

The 2005 White Sox were the best team in baseball that season
The 2006 Cardinals were the best team in baseball that season
The 2007-2008 New York Giants were the best team in football last season.

To argue otherwise is to try to argue a fact. It's an impossible argument to make. You guys seem to love to want to give out "on paper" and regular season championships. They have a playoff system for a reason, and that determines the champion and the best team from that season.



Wrong.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I don't understand where you're coming from. Are you saying that the best team always wins the championship? OK, here's a thought experiment: put any two NFL teams together. Would you agree that the chances of one team beating the other is never 100%?

OK, if the chances aren't 100%, that means there's some chance that one team will defeat another. Even if the two teams are unbelievably lopsided, the worse team will still have a 1% chance, lets say (even the most lopsided moneylines for the Pats last year gave the opponents a 4% chance.) That means 1 time out of 100, the worse team will have won, even though it is worse.

OK, now imagine that the game is the championship game. Obviously, the teams will be closer in skills, but one team could easily be better than the other and still lose. The Giants didn't have a 100% chance of beating the Patriots. I think they had a less than 50% chance of beating them.

You may disagree. But nevertheless, there is still the obvious possibility that the worse team could, potentially, win a championship match. It cannot be otherwise; it would be the same as saying that the team that has the greater possibility of winning always wins in the championship. That cannot logically be true; we don't hold the same opinion for any other game.

I used football because each game is a singular event; baseball is more complicated because there are series. But it is also easier because the percentages are much closer; even in the regular season, the chances of some team winning are always greater than, say, 20% If the Mariners beat the Red Sox tonight, we wouldn't say, "Oh, the Mariners are obviously better, because they won the game, and you don't play the games on paper." We'd say, "well, anything can happen in a single game."

Finally, this isn't an attack on the White Sox. I think they were the best team in 2005, regardless of whether or not they were the champions (which, of course, they were.)

if you have a sport that determines its champion by a playoff and a championship, then the winner of that championship IS the champion of the season...that's just the way it goes. there's really no "yes, but" about it. you set up a playoff system for the sole purpose of identifying who the best team is by the end of the year.

i still think the better team can lose a championship, but that doesn't matter. it's not about who the BEST team of the year was, it matters who WON the championship ultimately.

Now, in something like soccer, where it's based on a point system, and there is NO championship, then you can say...yes, Manchester United was the best team in the English Premiere League. Why? Because they scored the most points throughout the season. There was no one better.

But in our case, in playoffs and championships, determining the best team is done by a process of elimination...and usually the best team does find a way to win.

Were the Cardinals the best team in 2006? What difference does it make? They won the World Series--and that's what every team plays for from the beginning of the season. I personally wouldn't care if the Cubs were 80-82 going into the playoffs--if they won the World Series that means they beat teams that were most likely "better" than they were, or had better records...and it wouldn't matter--the outcome, whether they won 100 games that year, or 80, is the same if they win the World Series...which won't HAPPEN BECAUSE THEY'RE THE CUBS GODDAMN OH...ohhh...

i HATE THE CARDINALS!!!

That's all true. I think that's what Farvefan is missing. You're not crowning the best team of the year award. You're crowning the champion. You would hope that the champion is very often the best team, but it isn't always. The most exciting championships are often when the best team doesn't win (although there's a limit on this; if the result seems entirely random, then interest will lack.)