Did anybody really see this coming?
The Atlanta Braves are going to the World Series. They'll be going up against the cheatin' Houston Astros. That's a big deal for Braves fans. And national interest, I think, is hovering just above life support when the Series begins Tuesday night.
I have a thought or two behind this Fall Classic ennui.
In a weird happenstance of the baseball playoff system, the best teams in the game are nowhere to be found.
In a regular season of 162 games for each team, the American League East champs, Tampa Bay, finished with 100 victories. The Rays were eliminated by the upstart wildcard Boston Red Sox, winners of 92 games, in the league division series.
Meanwhile, the Astros, with 95 victories to win the AL West, eliminated the Chicago White Sox, who won the AL Central with 93 victories.
The Astros, who are seeking some sort of redemption for a sign-stealing scandal a couple years ago, then eliminated the Red Sox in the league championship series.
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| Pearls on the diamond. |
The Braves, meanwhile, came out of baseball's weakest division, the NL East, with only 88 wins to claim the division title. And yet, they advanced to the league championship by knocking off NL Central champs Milwaukee, which had 95 victories.
The 88-win Braves then stunned the 106-win Dodgers last night to advance to the World Series. That 18-game disparity between the two teams may suggest a lot about the state of baseball right now, but it's also why you play the games.
Imagine: three teams that won 100 games or more are going to be at home watching the Series on television.
Before expansion, World Series teams were determined by the winners in each league of a 154-game season. The long season was clearly the most accurate method to determine the best team to advance directly to the World Series because, over the course of six months, it considered injuries to key players, managerial brilliance or faux pas, winning and losing streaks, front office capability, and sometimes, just dumb luck.
Expansion, by necessity, brought divisional play to the postseason. Consequently, the best teams over the course of the regular season were sometimes eliminated in the playoffs by perhaps lesser teams that just happened to get hot at the right moment.
Which is where we are right now. The Series pits one team – the Astros – trying to overcome the bad taste of a sign-stealing scandal in 2017 and 2018 for which it was fined $5 million and forfeited first- and second-round draft picks, against a team – the Braves – who feature a homer-hitting outfielder who wears a pearl necklace.
The Braves used to be America's team, thanks to a cable superstation, TBS, that broadcast all of the Braves games across the country back in the 1980s and '90s. You could find Braves fans in Idaho, for crying out loud.
But now streaming, cable packages and other avenues of broadcast have given fans alternative opportunities to cheer for teams without tomahawks on their jerseys.
Although, I don't know, a guy wearing a pearl necklace might bring some of them back.
It's not entirely clear why Joc Pederson is wearing pearls at the plate, but his fashion statement is catching on. Burly men oozing testosterone through their beards and goatees can be seen sitting in Truist Park clutching their pearl necklaces during crucial moments in the game. I suppose I ought to salute these guys for being secure in their sense of gender identity, but I'm guessing it's really a baseball thing that has more to do with superstition and not messing with baseball fate than it does with chromosome identity.
I suppose a man could walk into a restaurant today wearing a pearl necklace without drawing a second glance – as long as he was wearing a Braves hat.
But who would ever have thought there'd be pearls on the diamond? What if his necklace breaks and pearls go rolling all over the field? That would be something for Sports Center.
Anyway, who's going to win the Series? This is a tough one for me. On paper, Houston is the better, more complete team. But there's that scandal that still lingers over the Astros in the same way that the New England Patriots can't quite shake Spygate and Deflategate. Look, sign stealing has been in baseball for as long as there has been baseball. The difference here is that the Astros got caught and are paying the price to their reputation.
The Braves are a good, young team that could be around for several more years. And really, they're just a few hours drive from Lexington. I should be pulling for them if for no other reason than proximity. And they did defeat one of the best teams in baseball.
I just don't know. OK, if I have to pick, Astros in six. Cover your nose and hide your jewelry.
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