World Series Game 4: Put This World Series Out of Our Misery

Let’s be honest. This World Series has been unwatchable.

The ratings say it all. Game 2 earned a disappointing 8.5 rating. Last year, Game 2 earned a 11.5 rating.

Talk about how the World Series needed the Yankees, but even if the Yankees were there, what’s the point if they are blowing everyone out? The Yankees fans love watching their team win in a blowout and the ratings would be fine, but it does not make a World Series a success.

It can be considered successful only if both teams play well and extend the series to seven games. This has not been the case. The Giants outplayed the Rangers for most of this series.

This series should end tonight. If it does, no baseball fan  will remember it 10 years from now. Giants fans will, and they should. It's their first championship in San Francisco.

It's just that this should have been seven games. Both teams were good enough to make it happen. Unfortunately, Giants starters are just too good.

It's a shame. Outside of the Giants starters and the misfits, what was good about it?

Saturday night was perceived to be the start of a turnaround by the Rangers. It got people to watch Game 4.

The Rangers received back-to-back home runs by Mitch Moreland and Josh Hamilton, and from there, Rangers starter Colby Lewis finished the Giants to make it a 2-1 series.

Now that was a team that needed this. They had to get on the board early for the sake of confidence. They couldn’t let Giants starter Jonathan Sanchez get into a groove, and then lull them to sleep like Matt Cain did in Game 2.

The Rangers looked like a different team at Arlington. They knew how to hit it out, and they knew where to find holes to hit. That wasn’t the case at AT&T Park, where it was a challenge for them to hit the ball out of the park. It appeared the Rangers became psyched out late in Game 2.

Despite the Rangers’ success at their ballpark, the Giants were capable of pitching at least one good game there.

They received it by Madison Bumgarner, and they can get it again by Tim Lincecum tonight.

Bumgarner stymied the Rangers by being ahead of the count all night long. He used his changeup to get out of jams. He showed composure, approaching this as a regular game.

For this baseball fan’s sake, this series had to be extended for the sake of good ratings, just so people can pipe down about the need of the Yankees.

It’s imperative those audiences watch the World Series instead of focusing to other sports at this time of the year. This should be baseball’s time.

The World Series is an event where new people become baseball fans.  It’s an event where people come together to see the best teams vie for a trophy. It has to have a Super Bowl-like atmosphere.

Lately, that hasn’t been the case. Most of the games have been tough to watch in recent years. This has been total domination from one team going back to 2004.

The last World Series that was good was in 2003. That was when the upstart Marlins stunned the baseball community by upsetting the Yankees. Josh Beckett shut up New Yorkers by not giving any Yankees an inch to hit on that Saturday night at the Bronx.

The ratings not only were good because of the Yankees, but people fell in love with the Marlins. Yankee haters couldn’t enjoy enough about the Marlins being fearless about the Yankees. Then-Marlins manager Jack McKeon became an inspiration to people for motivating a young team.

This World Series could use a good story. The Giants are a good story itself with how young players and castoffs bond together to get to where they are now, but so are the Rangers with what they did all year.

The Rangers needed to do their part of the bargain to make this Fall Classic interesting.

It hasn't happened.

The time has come for the Giants to end it, tonight.