Despite the Angels' Disney ownership (and wasn't the Michael Eisner- John Travolta lovefest in the owners' box during Game 7 easily as disgusting as anything George Steinbrenner ever unleashed on the public?) and the ubiquitous Rally Monkey, it's hard to begrudge their victory. The franchise was snakebitten for so many years, and there are players on the team who have played a long time and deserved some recognition. But when this Series is remembered, it's going to be because of what Barry Bonds did. He dominated the Series the way very few-- Reggie Jackson, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax-- ever have before. I think it was silly not to ake him the Series MVP.

The turning point, I suppose (outside of not being able to hold a 5-0 lead), was when Dusty Baker wrote Livan Hernandez' name on his scorecared to start Game 7. It sure didn't look like he had anything left after his first start of the Series. I have a theory that his poor performance in Game 7 was a cosmic payback for his undeserved MVP award in the 1997 Series, but maybe that's just me.

As Game 7s go, it wasn't up to the drama level of any of the recent ones (1991, 1997, 2001), but not every game can be a classic. As far as the Series itself, it was probably comparable to the Indians-Marlins in '97, maybe a little above that based on the memorable performance of Bonds. 1991 and 2001 were better...

Oh, and one other thing... the new World's Champions are a team that, according to Commissioner Bud, shouldn't have had a chance to be competitive according to their middle-of-the-pack payroll. Can we please stop pretending that this is relevant?

At around the 3rd inning of Game 4, my selection of the Giants didn't look too smart, as the Angels were up two games to one, ahead 3-0, and were apparently going to keep scoring and scoring. Now, though, the Giants are up 3-2, and could win it all tonight.

I know it's not all Bonds, but when he's on base as much as he is due to all the intentional walks, it certainly pumps up the offense. I guess the key so far has been that when the Giants' starting pitching has done adequately, they've won. I didn't think the Angels would be able to keep on putting together singles and doubles to create big innings, but without overpowering pitching on either side, they made me look foolish for a while.

Besides the matter of which team was better, before the Series started I wondered which team should win-- that is, who deserved it more. Both the Angels and the Giants are traditionally troubled franchises with lots of bad luck in their past. The Angels have never gotten this far before, have been almost comically mismanaged for most of their history, and have endured three embarrassing collapses (1982, 1986, and 1995). The Giants had a tremendous history in New York, but outside of the John McGraw years haven't been that successful either, and they haven't won the Series since 1954. They've never won in San Francisco. How do you choose a rooting interest in this case?

If you have to choose one thing, maybe as good a reason as any would be that it seems right that arguably the second- or third-greatest player in baseball history (behind Ruth and possibly Honus Wagner) ought to have a championship.

(I have a secret desire to revive usage of the Progressive Era-terminology which referred to the World Series as the "World's Series" and the World Championship as the "World's Championship"... hence the title!)

We are down to the Angels and the Giants... two wild-card teams for the first time, although both teams with at least 95 wins in the regular season, and neither got to play that many games against the Devil Rays to fatten up their record. Compare that to the year when the Mets won a division "title" with 83 wins or so, and then won the NLCS to get to the World's Series. In theory, I don't like the wild card, but the truth is, since the leagues broke into divisions in 1969, teams with fewer wins than their opponent have had the chance to get to the Series-- this is just the continuation of the slide down the slippery slope, and if it didn't bother anybody for 28 years (until the wild-card Marlins won it all in 1997), why should it now? So, you'll not hear any bashing of these two teams from me. They are both good, and well-matched. It should be an excellent series.

The trouble is, how should I make my prediction? I haven't exactly been ripping on my picks so far. If it weren't for the Giants, I would have picked all of the series wrong. In particular, my pick of the Twins over the Angels looks silly since I based it on the Twins' better power, and it sure seemed like the Angels had more power in the ALCS. But, in my defense:

And that's without the DH for the Giants, although Barry Bonds is as good a description of a "designated hitter" as there is. So, the Giants have more power. The Giants also have a better team on-base average, and a better team slugging percentage, again without a DH and playing in a pitcher's park. I just think there's no doubt, the Giants are more capable of scoring runs. Neither the Giants or Angels have a great starting rotation, although it's solid, and both have a good bullpen, though the Angels' seems to be better and has been downright otherworldly so far.

I think the key thing will be what the Angels do with Bonds. There have been two well-written pieces on this problem in the last day or two, both unfortunately coming to the opposite conclusion. King Kaufman in salon.com argues that it's insane to pitch to Bonds in any dangerous situation, and that doing so will ensure the Angels' defeat. On espn.com, one of the Baseball Prospectus boys argues that statistically, walking Bonds to pitch to the rest of the lineup is an insane percentage move, since it puts another runner on base without even trying to get an out, therefore extending the number of hitters they have to face (and ensuring that Bonds will come up even more often). In analytical terms, I agree with the statistical argument, but I agree that it looks worse to lose because Bonds went wild.

Now, in the course of baseball history, both the Giants and Angels are tortured franchises... so forget about who will in, who should win, in order to balance the scales of fate? I don't know, but more importantly, I've got no time to go into that now! Maybe tomorrow...