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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2008 BARROW JOURNAL PAGE 3B AMERICA’S PASTTIME Synthesizing the World Series STRONG DEFENSE Westside Middle School’s Khadary Hawthorne (47) intercepts a pass in the league championship game against West Jackson. Huskie coach Paul DeFoor credited his team’s defense with playing a key part in the championship. Photo by Lyn Sengupta Title continued from IB A s I write this col umn, the 2008 World Series begins in 1 hour, 20 minutes. This will be, contrary to what you may have heard, much like the other Series played for the last 100 years. However, as I was gather ing data for this article the other day, I discovered a trav esty in recent Series games that few may know. First the data, then the revelation of what baseball has done to a key part of the game. Of the last 10 World series (1998 - 2007), the American league has dominated - as they have the All Star games - by defeating the National League pennant winners by an impressive seven series to three. Of those seven series wins, the American League has swept the National League contenders five times. Only two series of the last ten have gone seven games, and only one more has gone six. One can conclude that the last decade of series play has been very predictable and lopsided. I suspect that this year's series will be the same. Of the twenty teams that have played in the last ten World Series, eight have been from the east coast, five from the west coast, four from the Midwest and three from the south. East coast teams have dominated by winning five of the ten. The most runs scored per inning (1.35) series was in 2002 when the Angels took down the Giants in seven despite Barry Bonds' four home runs. The least runs per inning (.72) series was in 2003. Here, the amazing Marlins took control of the New York Yankees, beat ing them in six games. In this decade of series, the entire decade, only four teen tri ples were recorded. In those ten years, 50 Series games were played in 459 innings. My calculations show that only one triple was recorded every 3.57 games or one every 32.79 innings. If you were not interested in really watching the play, one could come to the game for the peripheral entertain ment. In 2006, Stan Musial threw out the first pitch in game 5. (Stan will be 68 years old on November 21.) In 2007, the Boston Pops per formed the National Anthem. In 1998, Tony Bennett sang “America The Beautiful.” In 2001 some guy named John McCain, a Senator from Arizona, threw out the first pitch in game 7. In 2003, David Cassidy warbled “God Bless America” in game 3. In 1999, the aging Warren Spahn threw out the first pitch of game one. In 2000, the ceremonial first pitch of the series was delivered by Don Larson. And my personal favor ite: in the fourth game of the 2002 series, Natalie Cole sang the National Anthem and Tony Bennett sang, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Heck, I would have paid the admis sion price just to have heard them perform. From 1998 to 2004, the seventh inning stretch, as it had been for the past fifty years, was enhanced by the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” by the throng of fans. In 2004, the organ ist at Busch Stadium in St. Louis kept everyone in tune as she tickled the ivories to the delight of all. Then suddenly, in 2005, this all came to a crashing end. My story of World Series past becomes as dark as the ghost of Jacob Marley. For it was in 2005, the organ fell silent, replaced by a recording of the fans' favorite song. Baseball had become synthesized. Now I admit to being a traditionalist, a stalwart of the “old” game, sans desig nated hitter and inter-league play. I have had to endure these assaults on the game and more recently the instant replay to determine a ques tionable home run. But syn thesizing our favorite baseball song may be the last straw. It is no surprise that the old tradition of the live organ was broken in Minutemaid Park in Houston. This is the same park (and I use that term loosely as Minutemaid resembles an old ironclad monstros ity which was pulled up from the murky waters of the Mississippi) which has a “tickertape” electronic board which runs the current stock quotes for the fans’ “enjoy ment” during field changes. Video games, iPods, cell phones, Blackberries. Heaven help us. Now they’ve synthesized the World Series. John Rieken is an avid baseball fan and contrib uting column ist for The Barrow Journal. E-mail com ments about this column to jrieken @ winds tream. net. In the final regular season game, the Huskies played Oconee County in monsoon- type conditions. The game was called three minutes into the third quarter with Oconee leading 23-8. “We like to say that we were undefeated in completed games,” DeFoor said. Eventually, Westside would meet West Jackson in the league championship contest and once again solid defense played a role in the 44-0 win. “West Jackson had a lot of very good athletes,” DeFoor said. “I really did not know how our team would rebound after the monsoon game with Oconee. We had two great days of practice and I felt like the kids wanted a champion ship.” On Westside’s first drive the offense was stopped inches from a first down and West Jackson took over at midfield. After moving to the Huskie 10-yard line, West Jackson was stopped. That defensive stand seemed to change the game’s momen tum. It was also a standout day for Zay Henry who would score six times for the Huskies. The Westside second ary played a key role in the win stopping West Jackson’s passing attack. Linebackers Chris Morris, Davis Holmes, Alex Visbal and Khadary Hawthorne did their part to keep the running game in check. “The coaches and I had a lot of fun this year coaching a great group of young men,” DeFoor said. “We are very proud of what they accom plished. I have to give credit to our linemen. They played hard in the trenches and put in extra work at practice. They would stay late for extra con ditioning almost every day for 200 yards of bear crawls.” DeFoor also credited his coaching staff of Clay Carlyle, Dustin Davis, Jeff Johnson and Holt Persinger. “They love what they do and are committed to giving our players their best,” the head coach said. \ . 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