If Google searches decided the World Series, the Cardinals would win

Google blogged about baseball search trends to get us ready for this seasons World Series matchup between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals. If the number of Google searches on each team decided the winner, St. Louis would be crowned champion.

The company said:

Let’s start with the teams themselves. The Cardinals are more popular in search than the Rangers. Perhaps that’s because the Redbirds—not your typical underdogs with 10 World Series titles and 18 pennants—were 10 games back from the NL Wild Card in September, and have since overpowered the regular season’s best Phillies, then their division mates the Brewers to win the NLCS last weekend. The Rangers are in the World Series for the second year in a row, still without a title to their name; yet searches were higher in the last months for the team they defeated in the ALCS, the Detroit Tigers, who saw an even steeper increase in search interest than the Cardinals.

The most interesting search trend shared by Google, for me, was that of the infamous “Rally Squirrel”, whom I blame for my Philadelphia Phillies losing to the Cardinals:

As always, there were some twists during this year’s playoffs, starting with the rally squirrel—a big hit in St. Louis. The rally squirrel made two live appearances during the Phillies/Cards series, including one in which he (or she) ran across home plate and distracted Phillies pitcher Roy Oswalt. The Cardinals ended up winning, and the rally squirrel’s likeness has since shown up in the stadium on T-shirts, towels and homemade signs. Perhaps the squirrel had a hand in helping the Cardinals overpower the Brewers and their “beast mode,” too.

Head over to the Google blog for all of the interesting baseball search trends.