I'm taking a brief respite from my Hamlet pentology (I promise my next post will be the last on the subject), to talk about current events. And what current events could those be? Well it's October and what can be more current than the Major League Baseball playoffs which concluded this week with the Tampa Bay Rays beating the Cleveland Guardians to face the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series which begins Friday night.
One interesting tidbit in a sport that lives for interesting tidbits, is that this year something will have to give as neither team has a World Series Championship in their resume. This is interesting because having two teams that have never won a World Series meet in a World Series is a far rarer occurrence than you might imagine.
The last time it happened was in 1980 when the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Kansas City Royals. That year the Phillies won their first title after 97 years of existence.
The last time before that was 1920 when the Brooklyn Robins (today's LA Dodgers) faced the Cleveland Indians (today's Guardians). Cleveland won that best of nine series.
Since the World Series in its current form didn't start until 1903, obviously there were plenty of opportunities before that for two non-champions to face each other, five to be exact.
Another rare occurrence this year is the fact that both Chicago MLB teams made the playoffs, something that's only happened four times. The first was in 1906 when the Cubs (yes they were indeed called the Cubs by then), played the White Sox (ditto) in the World Series, the only "subway series" this town has ever experienced. I put the term in quotes because Chicago didn't have a subway in 1906, so perhaps calling it a streetcar or horse and buggy series would be more appropriate,
Even better, the Cubs and the White Sox this year clinched playoff berths within minutes of each other on September 24, making that a red-letter day for Chicago baseball fans. But our long-awaited dream of an honest-to-goodness subway series was short lived. The Cubs unceremoniously exited the playoffs after being swept in two games in the Wild Card series against the Padres. The real story in town and in fact in all of baseball this year was the White Sox.
The old baseball adage is that in a 162 game season, every team wins 60 games and loses 60 games, so it's the rest of the games that make the difference between success, mediocrity and abject failure. Well in 2024 the White Sox didn't even come close to meeting that benchmark of futility, winning only 41 games and losing 121, competing with the woebegone 1962 Mets for the worst record since they started playing 162 games in a season* In fact, in each of the three seasons previous to this one, the Sox lost over 100 games making them the first team ever to make it to the playoffs after losing over 100 games in three consecutive seasons.
If you recall my post from exactly one year ago about that year's playoffs, I mentioned that I could just sit back, relax and enjoy what had to have been among the most exciting playoff seasons ever in baseball history, because I didn't have an emotional investment in any of the teams.
Well, this year I did. It was the team I've been a fan of since the early seventies, you guessed it, the White Sox.
And how right I was about being able to sit back and take it all in, last year. This year with some skin in the game, I hung on every pitch (WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT WAS A BALL, ANOTHER LEAD OFF WALK? SH%T!) in the White Sox playoff games. Which means instead of hoping for entertaining, competitive games, for the sake of my mental health I wanted the Sox to take an early lead and hold on to it for the rest of the game, which much to my surprise, they did in each of their first four games, sweeping the Astros in two games to take the best of three American League Wild Card series, then the first two games of the AL Divisional Series against the Guardians in Cleveland.
With the demise of the Cubs along with hopes for a Chicago subway series, my second choice for an ideal World Series matchup was an I-94 series, the interstate highway that connects Chicago and Milwaukee.
But that wish came to a screeching halt when the Sox returned home to be crushed by Cleveland in both games here. In the pivotal game five back in Cleveland, I let myself fall asleep after the Guardians took an early lead, not wanting to suffer through yet another agonizing exit of a Chicago team from the playoffs, something I've experienced far too many times in my life. Maybe, just maybe I'd be surprised when I woke up to find the Sox made a brilliant comeback as they had so many times this season to take the game and the series, but no such luck.
But truly, it was fun while it lasted and I'm not complaining at all, this year my team made the most remarkable turnaround in baseball history.
Thank you, White Sox.
After the I-94 series dream crumbled, my next ideal series was an all midwest series, featuring the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cleveland Guardians. Now we already know that the Brewers have never won a World Series but the city of Milwaukee did have a World Series winner more recently than the city of Cleveland. That team was the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. The Braves while they were in Milwaukee have the distinction of being the only team in the history of baseball who never had a losing record. The last time the Cleveland American League team won the World Series was in 1948, back when they were called the Indians.
This year the Brewers faced the mighty LA Dodgers who swept them in their best of seven National League Championship series last year. The Brewers won their first two games at home in this year's NLCS but were headed for LA where I was sure the mighty Dodgers, probably the most talented team in the game, would at the very least return the favor.
That feeling went away in game three as Brewer leadoff man Jackson Chourio homered off LA southpaw Blake Snell, taking the former Cy Young Award winner's first pitch of the game the opposite direction to the right field bleachers. After scoreless baseball on both sides for the next five innings the Dodgers would put up a two spot in the sixth to take the lead. But as they did in every game up to that point, the Brewers would come from behind, this time off consecutive home runs from Jake Bowers and Garrett Mitchell putting the Crew up 4-2 from which they never looked back, Brewers up three games to none.
But momentum is the name of the game, or so they say, and in a win or die game four, the Dodgers scored four runs in their half of the second, capped by a three-run homer by generational player Shohei Ohtani who had been virtually invisible up to that point in the playoffs. Folks in Dodger Nation must have breathed a sigh of relief thinking everything would turn around as their team was finally operating on all eight cylinders. I kind of thought that way too as I allowed myself again to doze off thinking that this game at least was over and the Dodgers would live to play another day.
How silly of me, Milwaukee chipped away at that lead with two spots of their own in the fourth and fifth innings and taking the lead in the sixth which the never relinquished, thanks to great pitching which held the Dodgers scoreless for seven innings three of which were pitched by Aaron Ashby who earned the National League pennant winning save.
It was truly an impressive series for the Brewers, certainly the highlight of this year's playoffs, having come back for the win in every game of the series, making them the first team to do that in a sweep of a seven game series. More impressive they were also the first team in any of the major US/Canadian sports to sweep a team that had swept them the previous year in the playoffs.
In the other League Championship series, the team I was rooting for, Cleveland, currently holds the record for the longest dry spell after winning a World Series, 78 years. As mentioned at the top of this post, the Tampa Bay Rays have never won a World Series championship (an expansion team, they played their first game in 1998), so there were plenty of reasons to root for either team,
Here's another interesting tidbit about both teams, and another reason to root for them. They are both in the bottom quarter of MLB teams in terms of payroll. Tampa Bay comes in at 25 of 30 teams and get this, Cleveland is dead last.
Of the top ten teams on that list, eight of those teams made the playoffs this year and one of those who didn't, the Toronto Blue Jays, were in the World Series last year. **
But all of those teams with seemingly bottomless pockets will be watching the World Series from home this year as the Milwaukee Brewers, number 19 on the list will face off against the Tampa Bay Rays.
In other baseball news, the players' current contract with MLB is set to expire at the end of this season meaning it is very likely that a strike or an owner shut down is around the corner. The main issue is a salary cap. Baseball remains the only major US/Canadian sport that has none. The owners and I would imagine the majority of fans are for it, while the players not surprisingly are against it.
It would seem that the two teams about to play each other in the World Series starting this evening, back up the players' position, proving you may be able to buy a good or even great team, but that does not insure a championship.
I don't know about you, but I do find that kind of reassuring.
Oh and one last tidbit before I tune in the game, The Rays and the Brewers this year both had the best records in their respective leagues, another rarity. In the past 31 years since the wild card was introduced in MLB, the two best teams met in the World Series only six times.
The baseball gods must be pleased.
Go Brewers!
* 1962 was the Mets' first year of existence so their abysmal record can be excused. Not so the 2024 White Sox. There is a little bit of an argument over who truly had the worst season as the Mets that year only played 160 games, probably not bothering to make up games that were rained out earlier in the season. So, their record of 40 and 120 percentagewise (.250), is worse than that of the 2024 White Sox (.253), but the Sox lost 121 games that season, more than any team in the history of baseball. So, take your pick of the worst of the worst.
** The other surprise on this is to me is that the team with the highest payroll in baseball didn't make the playoffs this year either, the team from New York that doesn't wear pinstripes.
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