Baseball analyst Peter Gammons stopped by The Big Show on Friday to talk playoff matchups, the acquisition of the Liverpool soccer team by Sox ownership, and the Red Sox offseason. The ownership group behind the Red Sox recently bought the Liverpool soccer team, and Gammons offered his own insight for Red Sox management: “A friend of mine last week brought this whole thing up and he said ‘You know what, if things go bad, the Red Sox marketing campaign could be ‘It could be worse, we could be the McCourts.”’

Following are some highlights from the conversation. To hear the interview, visit The Big Show audio on demand page here.

On Tim Lincecum vs. Roy Halladay matchup in the NLCS:

“It’s a great pitching matchup. There were some studies done today of some of the great matchups. I think this is greater than [Bob] Gibson against [Denny] McLain in ’68, just because McLain wasn’t very good down the stretch.  It was a little different; I mean he was fortunate to get to 30 wins. I mean, it still was 31 wins against Bob Gibson but not quite the same. They listed [Sandy] Koufax against Whitey Ford in ‘63. There were a couple of names in the ‘50s. But this is probably in 25-30 years, the best postseason matchup. The one that I could remember that I looked forward the same way was Catfish Hunter for the A’s and Tom Seaver for the Mets in ‘73. What is fascinating to me, what we saw in the divisional series, is the return to the point where the elite pitchers have become the stars again. We’re not sitting there waiting to see how far Barry Bonds can hit the ball into McCovey Cove. We’re not thinking about, ‘It’s going to be 11-9.’ We saw so many elite pitchers; I think the losing teams of the 15 games of the divisional series combined for 24 runs. The elite pitchers were dominant, and I think from a fans standpoint, while it might be more fun to see a 9-6 game, people anticipate and will watch the great pitching matchups. Back in the 70’s when we had [Luis] Tiant against [Jim] Palmer, everybody in the city closed over that. Even though a 3-1 game might not be the most exciting, the pitching matchups are.

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