Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> Yes and no. You also have to acknowledge - in baseball in particular - that
> sometimes you just won't. Sometimes the ball just bounces against you.
> It's not skill, it's not a lack of character, it's not anything. Bad things
> happen to good people, in baseball as in life. The failure to acknowledge
> the role of luck is an attempt to impose a rational framework on an
> inherently irrational factor.
>
I agree that luck can be a factor, and I don't disagree with
most of what you are saying. But luck isn't always what
defeats a superior team. I watched the '88 and '90 (I
think) A's loose to vastly inferior teams - the Dodgers
(with that home run by Gibson in game 2, I think, that makes
me want to shoot the TV 'cause they keep playing it over and
over again) and the Reds. The A's weren't unlucky. It was
like they didn't show up. They didn't rise to the occasion,
the Dodgers and the Reds did.
I have a theory about this. La Russa kept the A's playing
on an even keel throughout the season. They were a machine,
methodically mowing down their opponents. The other
teams in the AL were afraid of them. I remember how Clemens
hated to play the A's and Dave Stewart in particular because
Stewart almost always beat him. Anyway, when they got to
the series, the A's were still this methodical machine, but
they weren't able to raise the level of their game for the
most important series, while the other teams were.
OK, OK, I agree that that's just a load of pseudo-scientific
BS, but I watched every pitch of every game and the A's
weren't lucky. They didn't get a lot of bad bounces or
blown calls. They just didn't play as well as the other
teams. Damned Reds swept them, mumble mumble spit...
--
Doug
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.zo.com/~brighto
