Kuzul

The San Francisco Giants just won their first World Series since 1954.

Their previous championship seasons had left various memories, such as John McGraw refusing to play the Boston Americans in 1904 and presiding over their next three championships until handing over the reins to Bill Terry in the 1933 championship expedition.

And of course, who could forget the underdog Giants in the 1954 World Series and Willie Mays’ dramatic over-the-shoulder catch leading to a sweep of the Indians?

This World Series, however, will have a different legacy.

No, it’s not that it is the first title to come to San Fransisco since the team arrived in 1952. It’s not even that it’s two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum’s first ring.

No, this one will have a much more profound meaning in history.

The legacy of this series will be, of course, Brian Wilson’s beard.

This is a great moment in baseball facial hair history, of which there have been many in its storied past.

The annals of Cooperstown are littered with Grizzly Adams-style full beards, Fu Manchus, handlebars, mutton chops, chinstraps, soul patches, goatees, pencil-thins, Marios and an endless array of five o’clock shadows.

Here are the top 10 facial-hair-having champions in baseball’s storied past.

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After 56 years of waiting, a change in location, and years of dealing with Candlestick Park, the San Francisco Giants have again reached the summit, winning the 2010 World Series, doing so with great pitching and a surge of hitting.

The 2010 World Series was not what many were expecting. Most had a Yankees-Phillies rematch, and many didn’t even have the Giants making the playoffs until a late September push. As a result, the Giants’ win is one of the more surprising ones.

Where does this Giants’ victory rank among the top 25 least likely world series champs?

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The 2010 World Series is upon us. In the next week or two we have the chance to see baseball history, to see two teams competing at the highest level for the crowning achievement in all of baseball. Along the way, perhaps we’ll share in a collective moment that will last a lifetime.

As we prepare to watch the Texas Rangers face off against the San Francisco Giants in this year’s Fall Classic, let’s have a look back at some of the greatest moments in World Series history.

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Tim Lincecum and Cliff Lee will kick off the 2010 World Series at AT&T Park on Wednesday night—the matchup everyone wanted and expected to see was officially greenlit when San Francisco Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy announced the Freak would get Game 1.

Cliff Lee, cooling his heels since his October 18th start in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, was tabbed as the Texas Rangers’ go-to guy the minute his mates eliminated the New York Yankees in Game 6 of the ALCS.

When the lefty with pinpoint control and the diminutive right-handed fireballer take the mound against each other, they’ll carry with them three of the last four Cy Young awards and a set of dominant ’10 playoff performances.

Lee has yet to whiff less than 10 batters in a start this postseason and has posted the following line—3 GS, 3 W, 24 IP, 13 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 34 K, a 0.58 WHIP, and a 0.75 ERA.

Not only that, he’s done it in 16 frames against the Tampa Bay Rays and eight versus the New York Yankees.

The Franchise hasn’t been quite as nifty, but consider that this is Lincecum’s first playoff rodeo and he’s still a relatively green 26 years of age (by comparison, Lee is 32). Placed in context his nine-inning masterpiece against the Atlanta Braves in his debut is all the more dazzling (9 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 14 K).

Timmy then outdueled Roy Hallladay twice—14 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 15 K versus 13 IP, 14 H, 6 ER, 2 BB, 12 K, and an injured groin—to lead the successful insurgency against the defending National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies.

If these two elite twirlers pitch to their reputations and recent exploits in Game 1, they could easily wind up on this list.

Until then, however, here is the list of the top 10 World Series matchups in the history of Major League Baseball:

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Through just two games and six at-bats in the 2010 NLCS, Cody Ross has hit an astounding three home runs.

Ross homered twice off Roy “Doc” Halladay, which is fascinating given the fact that Ross’ name backwards is “ssory doc” (sorry Doc).

Ross, who was claimed off waivers from Florida, has been one of the least likely playoff heroes in recent memory, which begs the question: Who is the most improbable postseason hero of all time?

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In honor of one of the best pitching matchups in NLCS history between the Phillies and Giants starting Saturday night, here are 10 matchups that had the same amount of hype that Halladay-Lincecum, Oswalt-Cain and Hamels-Sanchez provide.

In the past 20 years, many matchups have gotten hype. The most memorable hype for a series had to have been in 2001 when the Diamondbacks and Braves battled it out with five future Hall of Famers,

This list focuses only on individual game pitching matchups.

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Although they are two very different pitchers, the Giants’ Tim Lincecum and the Phillies’ Roy Halladay are two of baseball’s top three or four.

Saturday night in Philadelphia, Lincecum—the NL Cy Young winner each of the previous two seasons—will face Halladay, the front runner for this year’s NL Cy Young, who tossed a no-hitter in his last start.

Although postseason baseball was limited to the World Series only until 1969, and the World Series and LCS until 1995, there have been dozens of classic pitching matchups in baseball history.

Here are the top 10 of all time.

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At the time of year when all the talk is of MVP hitters and Cy Young pitchers, many important players are often not even considered. Although MVP does include the term valuable, that award is usually given to the player who has produced the most offense, and the Cy Young to the pitcher with the lowest Earned Run Average.

But there are so many more players—25 per team and 200 in the postseason total—all of them designated to a certain role. But the production of some players is more important to their team than others. So which players will be the most heavily relied on in this year’s playoffs? 

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The 2010 MLB Playoffs are only just underway—each NLDS series is only one game old—and we’ve got both drama and storylines. Rarely has the first six games of a baseball playoff season been so eventful.

As we head into this weekend’s games, here’s a look at the storylines that have begun to develop. Some teams are doing the opposite of what we expected, while Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees are doing exactly what we expected.

Let’s have a look.

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Barry Zito. Vernon Wells. Mike Hampton.

It doesn’t matter how much money is at stake, Major League GM’s make a lot of mistakes. Few names prove as much better than the three players listed above.

Some bad moves are avoidable. Some are not. But every offseason, every trade deadline, some general manager is going to make a move he thinks will help his team, only to see it backfire and eventually cost him his job.

2010 has certainly not been immune to bad deals. Adrian Beltre, Marlon Byrd, and Vladdy may have been terrific pickups for their current teams, but free agency is a zero-sum game. Somebody always loses.

Hindsight is 20/20, and with that in mind, let’s rank the 20 worst deals of the last year, from the 2009-10 offseason to the 2010 trading deadline.

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