Please see yesterday’s post...

...if you don’t know what this is about.

Dedicated to Viki of Chicago, which now happens to be the home of the World Champion Chicago White Sox. (In payment of a stupid bet.)

The 2005 World Series
(With profound apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer, author of ‘Casey At the Bat.”)

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Houston nine last night:
The series stood at three to zip, with little hope in sight.
No Texas team had ever made it quite that far before,
But now Chicago’s White Sox were about to slam the door.

The first game in Chicago led to many anxious doubts:
The Rocket Roger Clemens only lasted for six outs.
And though the Astros tied it up at three in just the third,
The Sox just kept on coming. Won by two, or so we’ve heard.

And Game Two was no better, though exciting at the last,
For Houston tied it in the ninth with two runs coming fast.
Chicago struggled, looking like a boxer on the ropes.
But then Podsednick homered, thus erasing all our hopes.

But now our team was coming home! They’d play much better here!
Games 3 through 5 at Minute Maid! We’d teach those Sox to fear!
And so with hope and confidence in Houston’s Killer Bees,
We watched them take a 4-0 lead... but then they seemed to freeze.

First Crede homered in the fifth, but that was just one run.
We’ll surely get the others out. Hey, winning feels like fun!
But then Chicago batted ‘round, and when the dust did clear,
We found that we were down by one, with little left to cheer.

But Lo! Deep in the eighth our Houston “A”-stros battled back.
They tied the game at five, and then they went on the attack!
With bases loaded in the ninth, they needed just one more.
But Ensberg swung and missed three times. We fussed and fumed and swore!

The innings came; the innings went, and time kept marching past.
The longest series game of all, we held out till the last.
But in the 14th with the bullpens empty and depleted,
Chicago finally prevailed, and Houston was defeated.

But hope dies hard. With one chance left to keep from being swept,
Game 4 arrived to sold-out stands. The fans their faith had kept.
And all the losses, all the wins that brought us pain or bliss,
With everything now on the line, it all came down to this.

A classic pitchers’ duel emerged, and batters could not hit!
Though sometimes runners reached the bases, nothing came of it.
For seven innings neither team could get a runner home.
Then Houston pulled out Backe (a mistake, now thought by some).

In inning 8 Chicago’s batters quickly found their groove,
And Lidge, the “expert closer,” couldn’t make his slider move.
Through decent defense Houston held the Sox to just one score,
They had just two short innings then to win, or tie once more.

I could go into detail about who did what to whom.
And claim that it was “no offense” that sealed the Astros’ doom.
They managed to get runners in position for a score,
But all were stranded by Uribe’s fielding, slick and sure.

So now, the series over, with the Sox as reigning champs,
And all the Houston fans departed down the exit ramps,
It seems the mighty “A”-Stros with their fearsome Killer Bees
Have by a clearly better team been brought down to their knees.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
Last night some men were laughing while their smiling children slept;
But there was no joy in Houston – the hapless ASS-tros had been swept!