Sunday’s Dallas-Philadelphia football game will certainly be more heated than the outcome of the Diamondbacks-Rangers skirmish, which after three games could not be equated to Reds vs. Red Sox in 1975, Red Sox vs. Mets in 1986 or Cardinals. -Rangers in 2011. The Fall Classic has played seven games each year, with Cincinnati, New York and St. Louis treating their fans to championship parades.
It might help if we knew more about the teams, or perhaps if there were different teams, with brand names being preferred. Baseball is the big loser, say more than one purist, by offering us teams with respectively 88 (Arizona) and 90 victories (Texas) during its flagship event.
The 162-game regular season, which once produced two league champions, served its purpose of separating contenders and contenders. Then came the playoffs and wild-card rounds, which led to extra games and more TV money. Shortly after, Derek Jeter hit the first home run of the World Series in November.
The stars shown most often in this WS are the announcers on the Fox Sports postgame show: Jeter, David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez are more recognizable than most players on either side. John Smoltz and Ron Darling appear on screen often enough to serve as a reminder of Octobers past, when seasons ended before the kids got in on the treats.
A treat this year would be not seeing Ortiz in a sports betting commercial. Baseball has sold its soul, it seems, to companies that cater to fans who feel their viewing pleasure is incomplete if they don’t bet on the game. Does this ease the entry of Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame? Shoeless Joe Jackson, remember, was suspected of baseball treason in the 1919 Black Sox scandal, and the disgrace he subsequently lived in with permanent banishment from the national pastime is punishment enough.
Did you expect a combination of teams from Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles (Dodgers) and New York playing this late in the season? Has it been that long since the Phillies were considered a pushover after knocking out the 104-win Braves in the divisional round?
Just say the Mets and Yankees died of natural causes – they weren’t good enough – leaving the Giants and Jets to play a 13-10 overtime football game on Sunday (Joe Namath’s old team vs. ‘Eli Manning) which didn’t look like a battle. for Madison Avenue but for Rikers Island. This was not a successor to the greatest game ever played (Colts vs. Giants in UT for the 1958 NFL Championship).
The pennant winners teased us with a classic series opener, Texas winning 6-5 in 11 innings, Adolis Garcia playing David Freese (2011 Cardinals) after Corey Seager’s game-tying two-run homer late of ninth. The next two games were lackluster, the Diamondbacks 9-1 and, after an off day, the Rangers 3-1 in Phoenix. Since the home teams are no longer locks and Games 4 and 5 would be played in the desert, illogical logic shifted the favored role to Texas.
A world title would be the first in three attempts for the Rangers or the second for Arizona, which in 2011 lost to Mariano Rivera and the Yankees in the first November series.
Tuesday night’s Game 4 generated considerable hype, but it may have been destined to be Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon’s second topic on ESPN’s late afternoon show “Pardon the Interruption” . Not with James Harden getting his freedom in Philadelphia and landing with the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.
