Cards WS win: The biggest postseason upset since Villanova?

Last seed in the playoffs, team basically backs in after a season-ending tailspin...and wins it all as the decided underdog in every series. To me, this is the closest thing I can remember to a March Madness-like run in the three major sports (hockey sucks!). Thoughts?

 

Well, BYH, I look at it like this: They won a brutally weak division and then ...

They beat the Padres in the divisional round, so not too much of an upset. They beat the Mets, who had no starting pitching after Pedro and Hernandez went down. Then they beat the Tigers. Like the Cardinals, the Tigers were a sub-.500 team after the all-star break. Nothing in those three series says upset to me as much as it says the stars simply aligned perfectly for a mostly mediocre team that was able to rise to the occasion.

 

I'd go along with that. The Cardinals deserve lots of credit for turning things around in the postseason, but this was more a case of a decent team that got hot and had a lot of dominoes fall in just the right way. Not in the same class with Villanova at all. George Mason's run to the Final Four dwarfs the Cardinals, for instance, even though Mason didn't win the whole thing.

 

Two things:

1.) To me, the Mason run doesn't compare to the Nova run because Tony Shinn is a sack of shit who deserves to be kicked in the nuts from now until the end of time fuck him and the fucking Patriots they didn't win it all.

2.) I don't think the Cardinals run exceeds that of Nova...not even close. The Cardinals didn't beat the equivalent of Georgetown in the World Series. But the Cardinals are the closest thing I can think of to a "bubble" team winning a World Championship since then...even if they beat three flawed teams to get there. They have the fewest wins of any World Series champ, they were extreme underdogs in all three series, had to win Game Seven of the LCS on the road and had to overcome one of the greatest catches in postseason history [/columbo] in that game to beat the Mutts.

To me, that's a pretty remarkable Cinderella run (ignoring the fact, of course, a buncha millionaires are pretty far from Cinderella). This would be like an NFL team backing into the final wild card spot and winning the Super Bowl. Why, if that happened, it would be an example of great parity at work! : :

 

I don't even think the Cardinals are the biggest postseason in 2006.

The Steelers were 7-5 and looked like they would miss the playoffs. Then they won four straight and barely made it into the playoffs. Then they won at Cincy, which some people (hi BYH!) thought could won the Super Bowl. Then they won at Indy, which only started 13-0 and were seen as invincible at home. Then they won at Denver and knocked off Seattle to complete the fairy tale -- a No. 6 seed winning three straight roads games on its way to a Super Bowl title.

St. Louis won 100 and 105 games the past two years, with a World Series appearance at two trips to the NLCS. So we knew they had to talent to do it. Only this time, they put it together at the right time.

 

I think you winning your bet against Spnited is the biggest upset of the postseason.

 

It's the biggest uspet in the World Series since the Marlins beat the Yankees waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2003.
It's the biggest postseason baseball upset since the Red Sox came from 0-3 down to beat the Yankees waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2004.

And it was by far the worst, least interesting, least exciting World Series I have ever seen (and that goes back to Christy Mathewson*)




*Not really, but the first Series I remember was the Brooklyn Dodgers beating the Yankees in 1955. Made a 6-year old very happy.

 

It's also worth noting that the Steelers' road wins came against the top three seeds in the AFC. And then they beat the No. 1 seed from the NFC. You can't have a more difficult road than that.

Similarly, consider Arizona basketball in 1997, a fifth-place team in the Pac-10 and No. 4 seed in the tournament that beat three No. 1 seeds en route to the title (Kansas in the Sweet 16, North Carolina in the semis and Kentucky in the final).

I'd think Florida winning the World Series in 2003 over the Yankees was a bigger upset. The Pistons' win over the Lakers in the Finals a couple of years ago was pretty unexpected too, I think.

 

To me, 2004 was about as boring as it got with concern to the games. Cardinals never led once, last tied in the seventh during Game 1 and scored a grand total of three runs in the last three games.

The only thing that made that series worth watching -- because the moment the Cardinals fell behind, you knew that they were done -- was seeing the Red Sox win for once.

 

1990 Reds, anybody ?

 

OK, I think we've established that the answer to the question in the title of this thread is a resounding, No.

 

Are you serious? This doesn't even come close to Villanova over Georgetown, although it's not really fair to compare a single-elimination tournament to the Major League Baseball playoffs.

If anything, I'd compare this to last year's Steelers Super Bowl team. They were both the last team to get in to the playoffs and both took advantage of the opportunity when they were there.