Top 7: Baseball Seasons This Decade

When I was younger, I reminded myself to try desperately, when I was older, to not make comments like “Wow, am I old,” “…that seems like yesterday,” “I can’t believe how fast it went,” or “I knew you when you were just a little kid.”  Those comments got old quick.  If I had a dollar for every time someone said one of those when I was younger, I’d have $200 or $300 that more than likely would be owned by the horse track.  Of course, I break the promise all of the time, such as now.  Listening to 90s on 9 on XM, it consistently blows me away that some of the songs they play came out 10 or more years ago.  It’s like I have added about 5% to my music collection this decade.  And it’s freaking over. 

As far as baseball is concerned, I can easily remember them discussing the players of the 80s, and how Kevin Mitchell just missed hitting 50 for the only time that decade.  And the 90s decade stuff seems like yesterday, hearing about how Mark Grace had the most hits, and finally realizing that doing “decade” stuff was a bit silly considering A-Rod was one of the best players of the decade, but couldn’t make “decade” teams because he didn’t start playing until 1995. I’m going to do it anyways, so here are the best baseball seasons of the 00s.  2007 didn’t make the list because of the uneventful World Series (Red Sox brush aside the Rockies) and the home run record fell and very few people cared at all.  2009 is not on the list because the season obviously isn’t over, but it’s probably a middle-of-the-pack or end-of-list regular season.  The only other season to miss the cut was 2008.

7. 2000
The Yankees winning after just beating the A’s in the first round was pretty discouraging.  People were getting pretty tired of the Yanks by this point, and it’s crazy that they haven’t won since.  Roger Clemens tried to cut off Mike Piazza’s head.  Jeter did that cutoff barehand play (or Jeremy Giambi didn’t slide, whichever perspective you take).  Sammy Sosa hit 50 homers and lead the league, though in the three seasons where he hit 60 or more homers, he never lead the league.  Dusty Baker won the Manager of the Year award, which just seems hilarious now.  John Rocker said a couple of things to a Sports Illustrated reporter and the world nearly exploded.  If you could have a list of seven former players to have been around to have a Twitter account, Rocker would have to make the list, correct?  Mark McGwire hit second for awhile this season because he was so injured, Tony LaRussa would give him a first-inning at-bat on the road and then pull him from the game.  He also hit a go-ahead 8th inning bomb against the Cubs in his first home at-bat since being injured, which I recall as the best moment of this season.###MORE###

6. 2002
The Angels beat the Giants in the most underrated World Series of the decade…a seven-gamer, with some huge drama in Game 6, and the start of reporters’ long-term fetish with David Eckstein.  Barry Bonds stopped being pitched to, walking 198 times, a major league record.  The All-Star Game ends in a tie, which remains funny.  The great World Series masks that nearly the exact same teams made the playoffs as the year before.

5. 2005
It’s hard to figure how to say this, but the ’05 World Series was the “most intense sweep” of all-time.  All of the games were decided by two runs or less.  There was a 14-inning game, a walk-off homer by Scott Podsednik, a clutch extra-inning homer by Geoff Blum, and a 1-0 Game 4 with the only run coming on an 8th inning single.  The Sox previously had gone on a sickening run of complete games by their pitchers in the ALCS.  It was also the year that A.J. Pierzynski solidified himself as baseball’s biggest d-bag.  In other ’05 news, Albert Pujols hit as clutch of a home run as any in baseball history.  Roger Clemens staked his claim as Brett Favre before Brett Favre, coming back yet again but not traveling with the Astros.  Sammy Sosa is traded to the Orioles for Jerry Hairston after pretending not to be able to speak English at a Congressional hearing.  The Nationals begin play and their streak of consecutive sellouts at one, still not to have been broken.  Rafael Palmeiro is suspended for performance-enhancing drugs then apparently falls off the face of the earth.

4. 2004
The Red Sox win for the first time in how-ever many years and set new records for overexposure, only to possibly be duplicated when the Cubs win the World Series.  The ’04 Sox are probably the best team of the decade, and the Sox probably the best overall team of the decade as well (though the Cardinals could give them a run if they win it all this year).  Barry Bonds is intentionally walked 120 times, which still doesn’t even seem possible.  Ichiro has a record 262 hits but doesn’t give the “Suck It!” sign after a walk-off bomb like he did last week.  He also is criticized for it in some circles because he hits too many singles, which proves again that someone will find anything to complain about.  The Astros and Cardinals play probably the best NLCS of all-time, but it gets very little national attention because of the Sox 3-0 comeback against the Yankees.  Randy Johnson throws a perfect game and his catcher is about six million times more excited than he is about it.  The most underappreciated hitter of the steroids era, Ken Griffey Jr., hits his 500th homer.   Eric Gagne’s insane saves streak is over at 84.

3. 2003
It wasn’t just the year of Bartman, but the entire ’03 playoffs were the best of the decade.  It was the year that Pudge Rodriguez slammed the ball down after tagging out the potential tying run in the NLDS against the Giants.  Cub fans nearly filled all of Turner Field and won their first playoff series since 1945.  Both LCSes went 7 games and were classics: the famous Grady Little Sox/Yankees game that ended with Aaron Boone’s home run and Bret Boone’s booth silence, and of course Marlins/Cubs.  The World Series wasn’t bad either: Josh Beckett dominated at Yankee Stadium in Game 6 and got vengeance on the “home-field means everything” All-Star Game garbage.

2. 2006
OK, fine, there is plenty of bias for this one being at #2: the Cardinals won the World Series, and Albert Pujols had like 19 game-winning hits in the regular season (but didn’t win MVP).  But it was also the year that people were predicting that they’d lose the series in three games.  Doesn’t it at least give hope to National League fans that they can still do damage in the World Series, as the AL is clearly superior?  Last year’s World Series was almost a carbon-copy of the ’06 series: tons of mistakes by the AL team, NL team wins it at home in five games in series marked by crappy weather.  The NLCS was also outstanding this season, probably the second best behind ’04.  The World Baseball Classic debuted too and was a nice little boost of energy from an uneventful month, though they may get zero major leaguers to play in 2012 because of all of the injuries.

1.  2001
The Diamondbacks won easily the best World Series of the decade, being up 2 games, then down 1, then winning the last two, including Game 7 off of Mariano Freaking Rivera.  This series was so shocking that the following day it still seemed like the Yankees had won.  Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs.  The Yankees hit two of the most amazing home runs in World Series history.  The Mariners won 116 regular season games and still no one was surprised at all when they lost in the playoffs.  Curt Schilling media-whored his way to a co-World Series MVP even though Randy Johnson had three of the four wins and a lower ERA.  Albert Pujols and Ichiro’s careers started in one of the most impressive Rookie of the Year ballots ever: Pujols, Roy Oswalt, Jimmy Rollins, and Adam Dunn in the NL; Ichiro, CC Sabathia, and Alfonso Soriano in the AL.  Randy Johnson struck out 372 batters in probably the single-best fantasy pitching season of the decade.

All in all, not a bad year.

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