Storybook Ending

Red Sox Nation got a storybook ending after all. True, game winning heroics from Big Papi or a little bit of dramatic sock blood from Schilling would have been a million times better. Under the circumstances though, this will have to do:

The 2005 season is over for the Yankees and in beautifully horrifying fashion.

Bubba Crosby and Gary Sheffield collided in the outfield in the second inning Monday night allowing a ball off the bat of Adam Kennedy to drop and two runs to cross the plate for the Angels. A-Rod grounded into a double play in the ninth inning to kill one last Yankees rally. A-Rod finished the series without an RBI. A-Rod "played like a dog."

Storybook, right?

The bad news is that if we want to watch baseball this fall, we will have to tolerate the "battle of the thundersticks" between White Sox fans and Angels fans.

If you are not familiar with the thunderstick phenomenon, this is when two inflatable rectangular objects are clapped together in a sea lion-like motion for the purpose of making a sound like "thud". No, this is not a mating ritual. It is done to show approval for the home team and when done simultaneously by thousands of people, it is commonly known as "the most annoying sound in North America".

I know that Angels fans have been doing the thunderstick thing since their World Series run in 2002, but apparently now the city of Chicago has adopted thundersticks almost as quickly as they jumped on the White Sox bandwagon. Forget steroids, Congress should take on thundersticks. They are ruining the integrity of the game of baseball.

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The best story from the weekend came out of the crazy 18 inning game between the Braves and Astros on Sunday. Apparently, the same fan sitting in the bleachers in Houston caught Lance Berkman's eighth inning grand slam and the game winning homerun off the bat of Chris Burke. I hope that this guy left the baseball game and went directly to his local casino. Nobody is that lucky.