It’s Boston vs. Colorado in 2007 World Series

By: Larry Fitzgerald
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 10/25/2007

 The Fall Classic starts this week, Wednesday, October 24: the best-of-seven 2007 World Series. It’s Boston vs. Colorado for baseball’s biggest prize.

 Who would have thought last off-season, when the Boston Red Sox paid $50 million just to enter into negotiations with Japanese pitching star Daisuke Matsuzaka, that he would wind up pitching the decisive game of the American League Championship Series?

 Matsuzaka pitched five innings in game seven and was credited with the win, becoming the first Japanese pitcher to ever win a post-season game in the Major Leagues. Boston rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat Cleveland 11-2 Sunday, earning their second trip to the World Series in four years. It was bombs away for the Red Sox, outscoring the Indians 30-5 with 40 hits in the last three games and extending the second-longest championship drought in baseball to 59 years.

 Colorado, the rampaging Rockies from the National League, will play in their first World Series. The Rockies have been on fire for nearly a month, winning an unprecedented 21 of their last 22 games and 10 in a row. The Red Sox will have the home-field advantage in the best-of seven-series.

 The Rockies beat Boston twice in a three-game series in June at Fenway Park.

 If the series goes seven games, it will end on November 1. The Red Sox have the home field by virtue of the American League All-Stars beating the National in the All-Star game.

 Both teams have former Twins on their rosters. Boston has slugger David Ortiz and Bobby Kielty, while the Rockies have pitcher LaTroy Hawkins. In blowing the 3-1 series lead to Boston, the Indians ended the American League Central’s two-year run in the World Series, Chicago in 2005 and Detroit in 2006.

 The Minnesota Twins have not reached a World Series since 1991.

 Fitz Notes & Quotes

 • Isiah Thomas, head basketball coach of the New York Knicks, should not be allowed to continue coaching the Knicks after being found, in a civil trial in New York last month, to have sexually harassed a former New York Knicks vice president, Anucha Brown Sanders, and to have then called Brown, who is Black, a bi**h.

 Rev. Al Sharpton has organized a protest at Madison Square Garden and is demanding that Thomas resign or be fired. Thomas said, “It’s not as bad for a Black man to call a Black woman a bi**h as for a White man to do the same.”

 • Guess which NFL running back leads the league in scoring? If you said Vikings star Adrian Peterson, you were close in terms of scoring touchdowns. Peterson has scored six so far. Off the field, however, it’s no contest — Denver Broncos running back Travis Henry leads all NFL running backs with nine children by nine different women.

 Gilbert Arenas, the high-scoring guard of the Washington Wizards, said that hitting a buzzer beater to win a game is better than having sex...unless it was with actress Halle Berry.

 • Former Gophers Men’s Basketball Coach Jimmy Williams is suing University of Minnesota Athletic Director Joel Maturi. Williams says he was offered an assistant’s positions on the staff of new current Gophers Head Coach Tubby Smith.

 When he was offered the position, Williams was on the coaching staff at Oklahoma State. Apparently, Williams gave up his job at Oklahoma State to move and work for Smith here at Minnesota for $175,000 per year.

 The complaint contends that during the NCAA Final Four last spring, Smith made the offer to Williams, but that Maturi later overruled the hiring. Williams worked at Minnesota in the 1970s and ’80s under Bill Musselman and Jim Dutcher and had a prior record of significant NCAA rules violations.

 The University says it owes Williams nothing. Both Maturi and Smith have declined to comment on the situation, citing pending litigation.