World Series Outcome Should Leave Real Fans Wanting

I’d like to say that Sunday night baseball fans were robbed of what could have been a truly amazing World Series. In reality, that came Saturday night when the Detroit Tigers did go gently into that good night, falling behind three games to none to the San Francisco Giants.

It seemed positively inevitable that the Giants would end up hoisting MLB’s World Series trophy, but it was just a matter of when. Of course, it wasn’t an absolute, but only one team in MLB history has ever come back to win a seven-game playoff series with their team down three games to none.

That remarkable comeback was in 2004 when the Boston Red Sox took down the New York Yankees, eventually going on to win the World Series as well.

You can’t deny that the Giants deserved this win 100 percent, and you can never take it away from them. But this World Series, as well as both championship series, has most likely left a sour taste in the mouths of true baseball fans.

We were supposed to be seeing a matchup between the two best teams in MLB. Instead we saw a sweep, the most unsatisfying outcome in professional sports. As a fan who saw his team make the playoffs for the first time in a decade and a half, the baseball season should have been more than enough.

But an exciting finish to postseason baseball was sure to follow. After watching the four division series, it seemed no team would dare lay an egg this postseason.

The Yankees did not get the memo. The Tigers received the memo, and then seemingly threw it away.

The bottom line is that baseball is better when its stars are performing at their peak. Prince Fielder disappeared, and Miguel Cabrera reappeared in a too-little, too-late performance from the Tigers offense.

Justin Verlander, the best pitcher in the world, was supposed to set the tone for the whole World Series in Game 1. Instead, he got rocked for five runs in just four innings, again proving that anything is possible in the playoffs.

When all was said and done, the San Francisco Giants outplayed, outclassed and out-coached the Detroit Tigers in a four-game sweep; an occurrence that even the brightest sports minds failed to predict at the beginning of this series.

It was a battle of two teams that could not have gotten there in any different kind of way. After sweeping the Yankees, the Tigers looked like they had all the talent to dispatch a Giants team that had to fight back in both the division and championship series just to make it to the final battle.

It wasn’t exactly David vs. Goliath, but momentum did appear to triumph over what most believed to be a more talented team.

Usually, after a nine-month season including spring training and the postseason, I’m ready for a break that includes watching football and basketball. But this World Series already has me craving next October, when baseball fans will be presented with a satisfactory finish to what was an incredible season.

We deserved better.

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