Opening Day 2026

We pick up where we left off last November after what was in my opinion, one of the greatest baseball postseasons I've ever experienced, perhaps second only to the 2005 season when my favorite team won the World Series for the first and only time in my life.

If you've forgotten about last year's MLB playoffs, you can read about them here.

Or to save you from what was perhaps my longest post ever, (that's not even counting the epilog which had to be added to cover the World Series), you can cut to the chase. This is how I ended the epilog: 

Baseball is a strange game and that's probably why I love it so much.

For me, with nothing personally invested in either team, the chill rains of the end of baseball for the year will be quite tolerable. Watching, listening to and reading about this year's post season was like eating a magnificent meal and being completely satisfied, leaving no room for dessert. Or like reading a novel that you can't put down which at the end leaves you moved and inspired but also drained. These experiences don't come along every day, or even every year. Sometimes they are once in a generation or even once in a lifetime experiences.

Which is why we remember them.

Come to think of it, the 2025 MLB Playoffs may have been even more enjoyable to me as I didn't have much emotional investment in any of the teams last year, excluding the brief appearance of the Chicago Cubs; consequently the games were stress-free and I could tune in for one reason only, pure love of the game.

Here's a link to an article from this weekend's New York Times about a significant change coming to baseball this year, the introduction of reviews of ball and strike calls. This is how the article titled Introducing the Robot Umpire, written by Matthew Cullen begins: 

The foundations of baseball have largely remained the same since Babe Ruth swung a bat. Nine innings make a game. Three strikes and you’re out. And the ultimate authority on all pitches is the home plate umpire.

With all due respect to Mr. Cullen, those foundations he mentions go back farther than Babe Ruth's time, perhaps by sixty or seventy years. But he's absolutely right that baseball has been a game historically averse to change and when change does come, there are some who claim all is lost and vow to never watch another game. That said, they usually come back after a few weeks. 

To some, the introduction of reviews of balls and strikes using the Automated Ball and Strike Challenge System (A.B.S. for short) is a no-brainer. For several years now, many televised broadcasts of major league games have featured graphic superimpositions of the strike zone above home plate, and a spot marking where the ball crosses the plate, giving the viewer clear evidence of whether each pitch was a ball or a strike. *

One might argue that given this technology, the role of umpires calling balls and strikes is superfluous. And yet, home plate umpires will continue to call balls and strikes on top of all their other duties. This year the only change will be that players, namely the pitcher, catcher and batter, will have the opportunity to challenge a call they don't agree with, turning the call over to the A.B.S. Each team will be given two opportunities per game to make an overruled challenge, meaning that because there's a premium on them, games won't be bogged down by frivolous challenges. 

This seems like a reasonable compromise between the folks who want to keep the "human element" in the game, and those who insist that the only thing that matters is getting the call right. 

Personally, I'm in the human element camp as part of the aesthetics and drama of a ballgame is the reaction of and to the umpire calling a pitch. That would all go for naught if baseball goes the route of professional tennis which has for the most part eliminated human line judges in favor of automatic ones. 

For me, bad calls seem to even each other out, you win a few, you lose a few, just like in life. When thinking about issues regarding sports officials, I always think of someone I knew for whom the only possible outcome for his team was this: either they won the game, or the game was stolen from them by the refs. Life was hard enough for the poor guy; I can't imagine what it would have been like for him if he didn't have bad officiating to hang his hat on and be forced to admit that his team actually lost.

But I think there is one driving factor that is going to make the human element dinosaurs like me lose this battle forever. It's another recent change in baseball and other sports in this country, legalized online betting.

For that I turn your attention to this brilliant article in The Atlantic titled not entirely ironically: My year as a degenerate gambler, written by staff writer McKay Coppins. 

In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned a law passed by Congress which restricted most sports betting to the state of Nevada. Before that ruling according to the article:

...professional sports leagues remained determined to keep gambling at a distance. High-profile scandals—the White Sox World Series fix in 1919, the Mafia-instigated point-shaving scheme at Boston College in 1978—had convinced commissioners that betting posed an existential threat to organized sports.

Coppins goes on to quote Paul Tagliabue, the late commissioner of the NFL who testifying before Congress said this: 

Nothing has done more to despoil the games Americans play and watch than widespread gambling on them.

After the 2018 Supreme Court ruling however, the leagues took a 180-degree pivot and made up for lost time as fast as their legs could carry them. 

In his article. McKay Collins uses a wonderful literary metaphor (no, not Shakespeare) to suggest why the highest court of the land in their infinite wisdom, may have not made the right decision. You'll have to read the article to find out why. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that legalized betting is a boon for the sports business. Much as they'd like to depend on the love of the game folks like my son and me, there just aren't enough of us around to turn much of a profit. Sure, fans will always tune in to their favorite teams' games, but how many folks would spend their valuable free time watching a meaningless late-season game between two teams they have no particular interest in? 

But if they have a wager on that game, well that's another story. 

Which is where the demand to get the calls absolutely right comes in. Back in the good ol' days when sports leagues distanced themselves from gambling, they could go on as they always had, letting human beings imperfect as they are, make the calls, then shrug their shoulders claiming that bad calls are simply a part of the game. But now that the leagues and the sports gambling companies are virtually tied at the hip, ** any bad call, even the ones that have little or no impact on the outcome of a game, will send a red flag to bettors that the games may not be completely on the up and up. 

As McKay Collins points out in his article, betting has been around as long as competitive sports. And as I've pointed out a number of times in this space, betting is the reason that spectator sports such as baseball exist in the first place, If not taken to problematic extremes, sports betting can be a fun social activity and bonding experience, just ask the tens of millions of Americans who at this moment have their own bracket or ten entered in the office NCAA Basketball Tournament pool. 

Baseball is a game that lends itself perfectly to betting, perhaps more than any other with the possible exception of American football. Since a baseball game can be broken down by each pitch, betting lines can be set up for any number of occurrences, most of which have nothing to do with the outcome of the game.   

That makes me think of my greatest moment of clairvoyance at a baseball game. I was sitting in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field one sunny weekday afternoon when the Cubs' late Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandburg was up to bat. With runners on base and a three ball and no strike count on him, I made the comment to my friends, presumably heard by several other folks within earshot: "Do you think he's going to swing at the next pitch?" 

General baseball logic says that batters shouldn't swing at a 3-0 pitch. But I assumed Sandburg would, given that a pitcher not wanting to walk the batter, will often deliver a nice fat pitch up the middle that a great hitter like Sandburg could take advantage of. Which naturally he did, launching a drive that landed in the seats not far from where we were sitting. I looked like a genius, if only I had put money on that claim. 

I bring it up because that moment is stuck in my memory, unlike all the other times I made similar comments only to have the batter take that 3-0 pitch for ball four. Those memories are long lost within the recesses of my brain. If I had placed bets all those times, I'd be deep in the hole.

Which is precisely why I don't bet on sports, I have far too many other methods to part with my money thank you very much.

Needless to say, I'm perfectly happy enjoying stress-free experiences at the old ballpark which I hope to do at least a few times this season with my kids God willing. And yes, I'll be keeping score.

Which means the only thing I'll have to worry about is a team sending more than nine batters up to the plate in a single inning, thereby messing up my tidy scorecard. 

I can't wait.

Play ball!

* Of course, no system is perfect, but it's safe to say that the A.B.S. is more accurate in calling balls and strikes than umpires. For me the best part is when the automated system proves the umpires right.

** If you don't believe that the sports leagues and the betting companies are tied-at-the-hip, next time you watch a game on TV, note the number of times you'll see an ad for an on-line betting site. 

Annals of the Game...

A scene from an old WWII movie (can't remember which one), popped into my head the other day. The scene featured two U.S. Army MPs guarding a military base somewhere in Europe during the war. Their job was to screen out enemy spies posing as American servicemen and officers. In order to do that they asked the following question: "Who won the World Series last year?" 

The assumption of course, understood by anyone watching the movie, was that any red-blooded American male would be able to answer that question in a heartbeat. 

I'm guessing that may have been a fairly safe assumption when the movie was made, probably sometime in the fifties or early sixties, the apogee of baseball's popularity, when in any given year of that period, if the answer didn't immediately come to your head, you could simply say "The Yankees", and have at least a seventy percent chance of being right. 

During the actual war however I'm not so sure that would have been a safe assumption as while baseball continued to be played professionally on orders from President Roosevelt, most of the players in the Major Leagues were themselves participating in the war effort*, leaving their teams filled with men who were ineligible to serve in the armed services. Two of the most famous of these were Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds, a fifteen-year-old left-handed pitcher too young to serve, and Pete Gray, a one-armed right fielder who played one season for the St. Louis Browns. 

Would soldiers engaged in the business of fighting a World War in two fronts on opposite sides of the planet have been fixated on the exploits of these children and  "4F" replacement players back home? I'm not so sure.

But you get the point, baseball was the most popular sport in the U.S. once, with its only real competition being prizefighting.

Today it's another story with several sports competing with and often beating baseball, at least where it really matters, in TV ratings. I'd be surprised if one in twenty Americans today could tell you who won the World Series last year. Which is why MLB is loathe to schedule its playoff games to compete with the NFL, even though the professional football season is still only in its first half. 

Sometimes it's unavoidable however, such as this past Monday when the Seattle Mariners faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the decisive game seven of the American League Championship Series, a game I might add, which will be remembered for a long time. More on that later. But suffice it to say, the two Monday Night Football mid-season games that took place that night, considerably outdrew a vastly more significant baseball game. In the United States that is.

Not so in Canada for obvious reasons.

It's too bad because this year especially, Major League Baseball's post season has been tremendously entertaining, featuring some magnificent performances by superstars as well as heretofore unknown players, extremely competitive games and series, wacky plays that no one has ever seen the likes of, and perhaps best of all, the return of some old school baseball.

And we haven't even gotten to the World Series yet! 

This year's roster of twelve teams in the playoffs included several teams known for their long histories of futility. This included my hometown Chicago Cubs who still hold the record for the longest World Series drought, 108 years. Of course, they broke that sorry string back in 2016, beating the team that currently holds the title of longest ongoing string without winning a World Series, the Cleveland Guardians,. Then there are the expansion teams that have never won a World Series, three of the five, the San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers and Seattle Mariners were included in the mix this year. 

Unfortunately, all those strings of futility will have to live at least another year as none of those teams are still playing.

Neither is the losingest team in MLB history, the Philadelphia Phillies, also knocked out of this year's playoffs. 

And I'd be remiss not to mention the Boston Red Sox who despite being tied for third place in all time World Series titles, had an impressive drought of their own, 84 years, which many blame on the "Curse of the Bambino", after their owner sold their star pitcher who wasn't all that bad with the bat, a guy named Babe Ruth, to the Yankees in order to finance a Broadway show.

After that whopper of a deal, the Yankees would go on to become baseball's most successful team in terms of championships, and all Boston would get in return is "No No, Nanette", the off-Broadway version of course. 

But in the end, it all balances out as the Yankees didn't survive the playoffs either this year.

The playoff system in MLB has been in place since 1969. Before then, dating back to the formation of the American League in 1901, the team with the best regular season record in each league would win its league's championship or "pennant" and would face the winner of the other league in the World Series. In 1969, which happened to be the year I started paying attention to baseball standings, the leagues were divided into two divisions consisting of six teams each, and the winner of each league's division would face the other in a best of five series league championship series, which would determine the team that would move on to the World Series.

As expansion teams kept coming on the scene, the leagues divided up again to three divisions in 1994. To achieve even numbers for the playoffs, a "wild card" team, the non-division winner with the best record in each league was added to the mix.   

This is all hooey to the purists of the game who would say what's the point of playing a grueling 162 game season when in the end all you get for winning the most games in your respective league is the chance to compete with lesser teams to possibly move on. Or to put it another way, isn't it more of an accomplishment to be the best team over a long, grueling season, than to be the best team over a one month season, which is essentially what the playoffs are?

The purists have a point. 

On the other hand, back when post-season baseball meant the World Series and nothing else, until expansion began in 1960, there were only eight teams in each of two leagues, a total of sixteen teams, And those sixteen teams only represented ten different cities as four cities had two teams each and New York City had three. So barring a "subway series" which New York saw a number of in the fifties, only fourteen teams representing eight cites would be left out in the cold come post season time.

Today there are thirty MLB teams. If the old system were still in place, fans of twenty eight teams would have little to root for, especially after July when it becomes painfully obvious to many that their team doesn't stand a chance to be the best of the fifteen teams of its league.  With more chances to qualify for the post season, that pain can be delayed in some cases all the way to September.

As a lifelong Chicago baseball fan, I've been there and done that far too often.

With the current system, instead of there being one pennant race in each League come late August and September, now there are several.

MLB has been tweaking the playoff structure since 1994, trying to strike a balance between keeping the competition interesting and making sure the teams that win championships deserve it.

The current system still has three divisions in each league, as well as three wild card teams, resulting in twelve teams making it into the playoffs. To give the best teams an advantage, the two division champions in each league with the best records get to sit out the first round of playoffs, known as the "Wild Card Series", which are now a best-of-three game series.

An example of how the current playoff system dramatically invigorates the season: this year in the American League, the pairings for two of the three divisions, the East and the Central, had yet to be decided until the final game of the season. In the National League, two teams, the Mets and the Reds fought for the last spot in the Wild Card race on the last day of the regular season. Fittingly perhaps, both those teams lost their final game meaning the Reds got the chance to be swept by the Dodgers (the answer to the question of who won the World Series last year) in their Wild Card Series.

That series may have been a bit of a wash but the other three went the full three game distance. The series I paid closest attention to, the Cubs versus the Padres, wasn't settled until the last out of the ninth inning of the decisive third game. Before that moment, any Cubs fan who is old enough certainly had flashbacks of the dreadful 1984 National League Championship Series when the Cubs took the first two games in the best of five series in Chicago, only to lose the series being swept the next three games by the Padres in San Diego. 

So what went through this old White Sox fan's head when with two outs in the top of the ninth, and the tying and go ahead runs on base, Padre's catcher Freddie Fermin hit a fly ball deep to center field? 

Why of course, hoist the "W" flag and cue the Steve Goodman. "Go Cubs Go!" As a Chicago fan, beggars can't be choosers.

In the American League, Detroit beat their division rival Cleveland, and the Yankees snuck by their own bitter rival the Red Sox, while the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays were waiting in the wings.

Before the wild card came around in baseball, these exciting win-or-go-home series pitting division rivals against each other only occurred in the case of season ending in a tie for first place, a bit of a rarity. Today they happen virtually every year.

The two National League teams that got to sit out the Wild Card series were the Phillies and the team with the best record in the majors this year, the Milwaukee Brewers. They ended up playing their division rivals the Cubs in the best of five National League Divisional Series. Meanwhile the Phillies took on the Dodgers.

In the American League, it was the Tigers vs. the Mariners and the Yankees taking on another division rival, the Blue Jays. Those two teams finished the season with identical records, but the Jays got the nod as division champs as they edged out the Yanks in head to head competition this year. 

That series seemed to be the one with real barn burner potential but Toronto handily beat the Yanks in the first two games in Toronto, 10-1 and 13-7. 

Game three in the Bronx seemed like icing on the cake for the Jays when they took an early 6-1 lead in the third and it looked as if the game and series would be over in a Toronto sweep. But in the bottom of the third, the Yanks put up a two spot. In the next inning an error and a walk put two runners on base for Yankee superstar Aaron Judge who represented the tying run. Off an 0-2 Louis Varland inside fastball, with the crowd chanting MVP, MVP, Judge slammed a massive drive that hit high off the left field foul pole. The Yankees scraped together three more runs in the subsequent innings while holding the Jays scoreless for the rest of the game. The momentum had shifted. 

Meanwhile the Brewers were having their way with the Cubs, having taken the first two games of their series up in Milwaukee. The sudden turn of events thanks to Judge's heroics gave me hope that something similar might happen for the Cubs and they'd be able to turn their series around when they returned to the Friendly Confines. Well, it took no Herculean (or Judgeian?) effort for the hometown team, just good solid baseball, no doubt with the support of their loyal fans most of whom reportedly spent the entire two games in Chicago on their feet. The Cubs ended up sending the series back to Milwaukee for a decisive game five.

As for the Yankees well, as they say in baseball, momentum is everything, until it isn't. (Hey someone must have said that some time). They went down quietly at home in Yankee Stadium in game four, sending Toronto on to the American League Championship.

Toronto's next opponent wouldn't be decided until two days later in a series that went the distance and then some. The Wild Card Tigers stole game one of their ALDS from the Division Champion Mariners in Seattle, but the Mariners came back to win the next two games, one at home, the other in Detroit, setting up a do-or-die game four for the Tigers. By the fifth inning of that game, the Tigers were down 3-0. But the Detroit bats came alive in the bottom of that inning with three runs, four more in the sixth, and one in each of the subsequent innings, while their pitchers held Seattle scoreless. Final score 9-3, which sent the series back to Seattle for a decisive game five.

In that game, the Mariners manufactured a run early in the game off a double, a stolen base and a sac fly. In the top of the sixth, former Cub Javy Baez doubled for the Tigers. With the left-handed hitting Kerry Carpenter due up, Seattle manager Don Wilson chose to "go with the averages" and pull his starter George Kirby who was pitching well, in favor of lefty reliever Gabe Spencer. That move backfired as Carpenter put one in the seats to put Detroit ahead 2-1. The other starter, Tiger ace and Cy Young Award candidate Turk Skubal, was pulled in the seventh after pitching a gem, allowing only one run and two hits while striking out thirteen in six innings. The same fate happened to Detroit as their relievers gave up the tying run that inning. 

But then crickets, the pitchers on both teams held their opponents scoreless, but not without drama, for the next seven and one half innings. That streak came to an end in the bottom of the fifteenth when the Mariners manufactured yet another run with a little help from the Tigers, off a single, a hit by pitch, an error allowing the runners to advance, and an intentional walk which loaded the bases for Seattle second baseman Jorge Polanco. On a 3-2 pitch, Polanco singled to right, driving in the game and series winning run.

Expressing the frustration of Tiger Nation after that tough loss, Dan Dickerson, the voice of Tiger radio, blurted out: 

I don't have to do a game recap, ah fuck. Fuck this game recap!

Dickerson thought he was off the air at the time but...

He apologized the next day for the outburst but I'm sure that wasn't necessary, most of the fans listening to the game could relate.

As the late, great Harry Caray used to always say:

Ah, you can't beat fun at the ol' ballpark!

I mentioned above that the Phillies are the team with the most losses in baseball. A couple things about that, first of all, someone has to have more losses than anybody else and the Phillies have been around longer than just about any other MLB team, so they've had more chances to lose. After being a truly awful team for their first one hundred or so years of existence, in recent memory, they've had several good, even some great teams that have been contenders for the big prize, More often than not however, they've come up short. In 1993, they lost the World Series in the most dramatic fashion possible to something that happens all the time in story books and little children's fantasies, but has only happened once in history. They lost on a come-from-behind walk off championship home run. It came off the bat of Joe Carter of the Toronto Blue Jays, the last time the team from up north made it to the Big Dance. 

This year, the Phillies' dreams of a third World Series Championship (they have even fewer of those than the Cubs), came to an end in the most dreadful fashion, they gave up a walk off, series ending run on an error. It wasn't just an error, but a mistake of judgement to be generous, or to be less generous, a boneheaded play.

The Phillies dropped their first two games to the Dodgers in Philadelphia, but won game three in LA. In do-or-die game four at Dodger Stadium, the game was scoreless until the top of the seventh when Philly Max Kepler scored off a Nick Castellanos double. That run was answered in the bottom of the inning when Dodger Mookie Betts walked with the bases loaded. 

Both teams then went down 1-2-3 every inning until the 11th. The Phillies failed to score leaving a man on base in their half of the inning. In the bottom of the 11th, off a couple of singles and a walk, the Dodgers loaded the bases with two outs when Philly reliever Orion Kerkering faced LA outfielder Andy Pages. On an 0-1 pitch, Pages hit a sharp comebacker to Kerkering's left. It was a tough play but Kerkering managed to field the ball. Despite his catcher pointing  for him to throw to first base, the pitcher came home with the ball but threw it wide of the plate.

Run scores, game and series over.

Now if you're familiar with the rules of baseball, the problem with this scenario should be obvious. Had Kerkerling done what his catcher asked him to do, that is throw to first base, assuming he made a clean throw and the first baseman cleanly fielded it before the runner reached the base (which video replay confirms he had plenty of time to do), the Phillies would have been out of the inning as with two outs, a runner safely crossing home plate is not awarded a run if there is a force out on that play at any base, regardless of the timing of the two events. 

Kerkerling was devastated after the play and any reasonable human being has to have tremendous empathy for him as he will likely, at least in Philadelphia, join the ranks of players like Fred Merkel, Fred Snodgrass and of course Bill Buckner to name a few, who went to their graves remembered for an unfortunate mistake in a pivotal game rather than for their otherwise successful careers.

On the other hand, the biggest bonehead play in baseball history took place at Yankee Stadium on October 10, 1926.. It was in the bottom of the ninth of game seven of the World Series with the Yankees trailing the Cardinals, 3-2.  With two outs in the inning, Babe Ruth walked bringing his teammate Bob Meusel up to the plate. On the first pitch to Meusel, Ruth attempted to steal second base.

When asked after the game why he tried to steal second in that situation, Ruth, known as the Sultan of Swat, not the Sultan of Swift said: "because I thought they wouldn't expect me to do it."

He was right, they didn't, but they threw him out anyway.

Well it just so happened that the following year was 1927, and to anyone with any sense of baseball history, the words "1927 Yankees" have a certain magic to them, as that perhaps was the greatest Major League Baseball team to ever take the field, and Babe Ruth was certainly at the center of that magic. 

So all was forgiven.

One can only wish, unlikely as it may be, that the same fate awaits Orion Kerkering.

On to the Championship Series.

Oh wait you say, what ever happened with the Cubs and the Brewers? Well let's just say the Wrigley magic didn't transfer to Milwaukee and the stadium formerly known as Miller Park. As in games one and two, the Cubs bats came up strong early, but not often, and the Brewers won game five, moving on to face the Dodgers.

Unfortunately for the Brewers.

Maybe it was sheer comeuppance for the Brewers' players' truly bush-league move of taunting their just vanquished opponents by posing with a Wrigley Field style  "L"(for loser)  flag in their on field portrait after the game. More likely it was that they were outmatched by a far better team. I like to think it was a little of both, but in any case, the Dodgers trashed the Brewers in the NLCS, sweeping the series in four games.

That's not to say the series wasn't interesting. In the fourth inning of game one, the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. Max Muncy hit a deep drive to center field. Brewer center fielder Sal Frelick tracked the ball down and at the wall made a spectacular leap, snagging the ball as it was about to go over the fence, preventing a grand slam. But the ball popped out of his glove and hit the wall. Frelick was somehow able to grab the ball before it touched the ground. He then made a perfect throw to Brewer short stop Joey Ortiz who in turn made a perfect relay throw to catcher William Contreras which beat the runner, Dodger Teoscar Hernández by a whisker. 

That was the second out of the inning.

Then Contraras, who apparently was the only player on the field who understood what really happened on the play, calmly jogged over to third base with the ball and touched the bag, while Will Smith, the lead LA baserunner was standing on second and Freddie Freeman and Muncy who was robbed of the grand slam were on first. 

Three outs.

So what happened?

Well I have to plead ignorance of a certain baseball rule as at the time I didn't realize that a ball hitting the wall is considered the same as a ball hitting the ground. In other words, catching a ball after it hits the wall, something that doesn't happen all that often, is not recorded as an out and has to be played just as if it hit the ground before being fielded. My son, a former umpire, had to teach me this. Regardless, Frelick did the right thing and hit his cutoff man as quickly as possible. 

But the play happened so quickly that even Frelick didn't realize the ball hit the wall, he assumed he had made a put out for the second out of the inning. Unfortunately for them, so did the baserunners who stayed on base, assuming a catch had been made. Hernández, the runner at third, confused as his teammates, hesitated tagging up before heading for home. That unnecessary action of tagging up, especially the hesitation, made the difference between his being safe and out at the plate.

To sum it all up, as a catch had not been made, the runners needed to advance as the bases were loaded and there was no place to put the batter Max Muncy who was not out, and headed for first.

So Contreras stepping on third forced out Will Smith, who by that time should have been standing on third.

Got all that?

I wasn't watching the game live but hear that the review of the play took quite some time as there were so many parts to it. The most amazing thing to me is that the replays proved without question that the the umpires involved, namely the outfield umpire who immediately called no catch on the part of Frelick, and the home plate umpire who called the baserunner out at the plate without a tag (as it was a force play), both nailed their calls on the field.

Believe it or not, that wasn't the craziest baserunning faux pas in Dodger lore. When the team was still in Brooklyn, there was a famous play (in a relatively insignificant game) where three Dodger baserunners all found themselves standing on third base. 

You can read about it here. 

This led to a running joke where a cab driver pulls up to Ebbets Field during a game and asks an usher how the Dodgers are doing. "They have three runners on base!" says the usher. To which the driver responds: "Which base?" 

Baseball humor.

That great heads up fielding play was far and away the highlight of the series for the Brewers, they simply had no answer for the Dodgers' pitching. The Brewers scored only one run in each of the four games and had a team batting average of .118 in the series, which turns out to be the lowest team average ever in a post season series of more than one game. That Dodger pitching staff includes the most dominant player in baseball today, and perhaps when all is said and done, all time, Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani you see, just like a certain Yankee from 100 years ago (whom I've brought up ad nauseam in this post), in addition to being a lights out pitcher, can also hit with the best of them. In game four of the National League Championship Series with the Dodgers up three games to none on the Brewers, the first inning alone was the stuff of legend. In the top of that inning, Ohtani struck out the top of the Milwaukee order. Then, thanks to a new rule made up solely for him, as designated hitter for himself, Ohtani, the leadoff hitter in the Dodger lineup, hit a massive home run to right center field, estimated to have traveled 446 feet.

Of course he wasn't done, He ended up pitching six scoreless innings giving up only two hits. And he hit two more home runs, the second, more than twenty feet longer than the first.

They say it was the single greatest performance in a post season game. 

I'm not going to argue with that. 

But as my friend Steve pointed out, what about Don Larsen's World Series 1956 perfect game against the Dodgers? After all, how can you beat perfection?

Well I suppose it's something that will be argued for as long as people are arguing about baseball. My take is this, a perfect game is a little bit of a freak of nature, in order for one to take place, the stars have to all be aligned just right. Yes perfect games require a tremendous pitching performance, that much is certain. But they also require, unless the pitcher strikes out everybody, the contribution of all the teammates in the field to make clean plays. And yes, perfect games also require a certain amount of luck, especially involving balls that have to be hit to players giving them the chance to make plays on them. One bloop single and there goes the perfect game.

There was no luck in Ohtani's performance that night, it was sheer dominance by one player.

.

And like that Yankee of old who defined the era in which he played, barring catastrophic injury, we may be living now in what one day will be defined as "The Ohtani Era."

Yes baseball fans, he's that good.

That brings us to what was perhaps the most exciting series this year (out of many) played up to this point, the American League Championship Series between the Mariners and the Blue Jays, the two highest seeded teams in the American League, and two teams that came into existence in the same year, 1977. 

It wasn't looking very promising at the start, The Blue Jays, the odds on favorite to win the series, dropped the first two games at home to the Mariners. They'd have to win two games in Seattle in order to bring the series back to Toronto, no small task.

Now the Mariners are the poster child for the opinion that the team with the best record over the regular season deserves to be in the World Series. In the 2001 season the Mariners posted a record of 116-46. No team since, wait for it, the 1906 Chicago Cubs had won as many games in one season. But that year the Mariners lost in the ALCS to the Yankees who won twenty one fewer games in the regular season. I suspect part of the reason why hardly anyone makes much of a case about it, is the fact that that series was played barely one month after the September 11th attacks and understandably hardly anyone cared about baseball that year, and those who did, like me, were rooting for the Yankees.

Had the Mariners won that series, it would have resulted in their first trip to the Fall Classic. They haven't made it since, making them the only team in the Majors who have never made an appearance in a World Series. 

Perhaps this was to be their year.

But The Blue Jays did exactly what they had to do in Seattle, winning games three and four in the Pacific Northwest, making sure that the series, win or lose would finish in Canada.  

Seattle did salvage their homestand by taking game five 6-2, giving them a 3-2 advantage in the series. 

Back at the Rogers Center in downtown Toronto, the Blue Jays took game six by the same score, 6-2, setting up yet again, a decisive game seven (the sweetest words to any sports fan), as I mentioned above, played last Monday night.

George Kirby would start his second decisive game of a series for the Mariners, this time facing Shane Bieber for the Blue Jays. Both teams scored one run in the first. Kirby settled down after that, allowing no runs and two hits in the next three innings while Bieber gave up another run in the second. Then after giving up a double and a walk in the fourth, Bieber was relieved by Louis Varland who got the Jays out of the inning. But the first batter he faced in the fifth, Cal Raleigh hit a solo home run to right, putting the Mariners up 3-1.

Another Mariner starter, Brian Woo came in for Kirby in the bottom of the fifth and he pitched two solid, scoreless innings.

Going into the bottom of the seventh, things were looking pretty good for the Mariners to make their first trip to the Big Dance. On the Baseball Reference win probability chart for that game, they were well into the eighty percent range at that point. Still in the game, Brian Woo walked Addison Berger to lead off the seventh. Then he gave up a single to Isiah Kiner-Falifa. Next up was Andrés Giménez who did something we haven't seen much of in recent years, he sacrifice-bunted to advance the runners to second and third. Next up was George Springer who was still smarting after being hit in the knee by a Brian Woo pitch in gave five. But he wouldn't face Woo in this at bat as the Mariners brought in Edward Bazardo to face him. 

And now a word from our sponsor...

You know folks, if you've been reading my baseball posts over the years, you've seen this quote countless times. There's no shame in that for me as these words more than any describe the game I love so much. So once again, here they are: 

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. -The first paragraph of  "The Green Field of the Mind"  a story by A. Bartlett Giamatti

It all stopped for the Seattle Mariners and their fans when eight outs away from their first World Series, on a 1-0 two seam fastball that Edward Bazardo left over the plate, George Springer parked the ball into the left field stands. To the joy of the 44,770 fans in the ballpark who saw it happen in person, to the all the Blue Jays fans living in the city the team represents, and to the fans of the team all over the country the Blue Jays represent, that was a moment they will never forget. 

The Seattle fans will never forget it either. I know, I've experienced those chill rains quite a number of times in my life as well, and have not forgotten. 

Springer's was a home run for the ages, an instant classic immediately compared to Joe Carter's blast over thirty years ago. And because he did while hurt and considered unlikely to play,, it was also compared to Kirk Gibson's iconic come-from-behind walk off home run for the Dodgers in game one of the 1988 World Series.

So now the World Series is set, the Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers will be heavy favorites to win, mostly because this team has plenty of playoff experience. Strangely enough, the Blue Jays finished in last place in their division last year. 

But they've shown great resilience as we've seen in the playoffs as well as in the regular season. Let by their superstar Vladmir Guerrero Jr. they posted an impressive 20 home runs this post season. 

But the Dodgers bats aren't too shabby either and they definitively have the edge when it comes to starting pitching. Their relief pitching is perhaps another story. As my resident baseball expert, my son tells me, if the Blue Jays can get the Dodgers starters to throw a lot of pitches and force them out of the game, perhaps they have a chance. 

We'll see. 

As far as picking a team to root for well, that's a little complicated for me. As a great lover of baseball history, I'd say there is no team with a more interesting history than the Dodgers. And like the city they represent, there's a lot to love about them, they are the team after all who integrated baseball. Unfortunately, also like the city they represent, there's also a lot to not love. It's complicated.

Toronto on the other hand is a city I love unconditionally and as I usually pick teams to root for more for the city they represent, than for the team itself, it would be a no brainer for me to root for the Blue Jays. 

On the other hand, the city of Los Angeles suffered a series of devastating fires this year so as I did in 2001, maybe I'll route for the team out of solidarity for the city and its people. 

On the other hand, the Blue Jays not only represent a city, but an entire country, a proud nation whose status has been relegated by the current president as nothing more than our 51st state. I'd love to see them win just to be able to say to Canada that we Americans proudly stand with and by you.

Anyway, two things are certain, I'm going to root for the series to go the distance and baseball gods willing, then some.

And I'm definitely going to root for the team wearing blue.

It's been a great ride so far.

* Two Major League players were killed in action during World War II, and another died of illness while serving the country. The number of Minor League, semi-pro, college and amateur players who lost their lives in service is well into the hundreds. Needless to say, scores of Japanese players also died in service to their country. I can't vouch for its accuracy, but here is a link to a list with their names. 

EPILOGUE - THE WORLD SERIES

Well I got my wish, seven games and then some. Experience led me to suspect that because the post season up until the World Series this year was so amazing, the championship series would be a bit of a let down. 

On the other hand, I felt the Blue Jays, the underdog in this series, would be tempered by fire with all the struggles in the post season they overcame, like coming back strong in the ALDS after Aaron Judge's momentum-shifting blast in game three of that series, and especially after losing the first two games of of the ALCS at home to Seattle.

By contrast, the reigning champion Dodgers had a relatively easy stroll through the playoffs, with only one of three teams, the Phillies, managing to beat them in one game.

It turned out the Blue Jays' biggest greatest recovery of all happened in game four of the World Series in Los Angeles when they came back strong, taking that game, mere hours after a devastating loss to the Dodgers in the eighteenth inning of game three on a Freddie Freeman walk off home run. 

Then the team from Canada (as my mother calls them) won game five at Dodgers Stadium, meaning they only had to win one of two games back home in Toronto to win their first MLB championship since 1993.

Come to think of it, thriving on adversity as they seemed to do all post season, maybe that one game lead and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel was the Blue Jays' downfall.

I did have a bit of clairvoyance Friday while trying to encourage a work colleague, a Dodger fan from LA, who was dejected that her team was on the verge of losing. I told her that Yoshinobo Yamamoto was pitching for her team that night meaning there was a good chance the Dodgers would win (game six). And in a game seven, anything can happen.

Well it turned out I was right on both counts. Yamamoto, who in his previous two starts pitched complete games, (virtually unheard of these days),  pitched another gem Friday night. I was a little surprised when Dodger manager Dave Roberts relieved him in the seventh as throughout much of the Series, the Dodger bullpen struggled. Things looked bad for LA in the bottom of the ninth when up by two runs, reliever Roki Sasaki hit Toronto catcher Alejandro Kirk with a pitch, The next batter Addison Barger hit a deep drive to the wall. There might have been a little divine intervention on that play as the ball hit the base of the wall on a fly and jammed itself between the wall and the ground. Chances of that happening are mighty slim indeed. 

Dodger leftfielder Kike Hernandez, who was not involved in the play, threw his hands up in the air signaling to the umpires to rule the ball dead and declare a ground rule double, which they did. This meant that the baserunner Myles Straw who pinch ran for Kirk, and who would have easily scored on the play, had to return to third base. It was a judgement call on the part of the umpires (as the ball never left the field) which drew scorn from some baseball pundits and fans, but it was the right call. 

This left a situation with the tying runs on second and third with nobody out and the championship winning run at the plate, the situation that Joe Carter faced 22 years ago when he hit his come-from-behind championship winning walk off home run in the same ballpark. 

Would history repeat itself?

In came Dodger starter Tyler Glasnow in relief of Sasaki to probably face the biggest challenge of his career. The first batter he faced was Ernie Clement who swung at the first pitch and popped up harmlessly to first baseman Freddie Freeman. 

One out.

Next up was Andres Gimenez who took the first pitch he saw for a ball. On the second pitch he hit a shallow line drive to left field which looked like it might drop in for a base hit. But Kike Hernandez on a hunch, played Gimenez shallower than is normally called for in that situation. On contact, Hernandez sprinted in at top speed. After the game he recalled losing sight of the ball in the lights but just kept running in until the ball somehow found its way into his glove.

Two outs. 

Shortstop Mookie Betts (as he recalled after the game), then yelled at Hernandez to throw to second as the runner at second, Barger, thinking the ball would drop in for a base hit, found himself in no-man's-land between second and third. By this time Hernandez was practically in the infield and it didn't take much of a throw to second baseman Miguel Rojas to double up the hapless Barger.

Three outs. Game over. It took Glasnow just three pitches to pitch himself out of a jam of massive proportions.

There would be no Joe Carter moment that night.

Which meant the sweetest two words in all of sports, game seven.

If that weren't enough, the matchup of the two starting pitchers for the decisive game of the World Series would be a fan's dream come true. The Dodgers would face future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, who at 41 was not only the oldest pitcher to start a World Series game, but is also the only pitcher who has played in a World Series for four separate teams. 

The Blue Jays would face Shohei Ohtani. 

'Nuff said. 

Ohtani solidified his legend in that eighteen-inning game where he reached base nine times! Yes, five of those at bats he was intentionally walked but for good reason; in his first four at bats, he hit two home runs and two doubles.

As if that were not enough, he was scheduled to pitch Game four seventeen hours after the last out of that marathon game.

Game four was not Ohtani's night on the mound, he was charged with four runs, (two of which scored after he left the game), and six hits in six innings, and was hit for the loss. And at the plate, he was 0-3 with a base on balls.

He is human after all.

Ohtani wasn't sharp pitching game seven either. He gave up a three-run blast off of the bat of Bo Bichette in the bottom of the third and didn't he last that inning.

The Dodgers put up a run in the following inning and another in the sixth, narrowing the Jay's lead to one run.

The score was 4-2  in the seventh when the Jays brought in their rookie starter Trey Yesevage who was brilliant in winning game five.  In game seven he unintentionally-intentionally waked Ohtani, then retired the side on a deep fly ball and a double play.

Still in the game in the eighth, Yesevage gave up a mammoth home run to Dodger third baseman Max Muncy, to bring the game within one run for LA. Jeff Hoffmann relieved Yesevage to get out of the inning. Then in the top of the ninth, Hoffmann came in to finish off the Dodgers.  He got Kike Hernandez to strike out swinging. Next up was the last hitter in the lineup, utility infielder Miguel Rojas, who played in only five of the World Series games for the Dodgers, two times coming in as a pinch hitter. 

Off a 3-2 Hoffmann slider, and a good one at that, Rojas quieted the hometown crowd with a game tying home run that I'm sure that was heard all across Canada, whose favorite team before that moment, was only two outs from the championship. 

In the bottom of the ninth which Jays' fans hoped would never have to be, another Dodger starter working in the role of reliever, Blake Snell, gave up a single and a walk. Snell then was replaced by none other than Yoshinobo Yamamoto, the winner of game six. It didn't start out too well for him this time as he hit the first batter he faced, Alejandro Kirk, who you may remember got beaned in another make or break situation the night before. That loaded the bases, with the championship run ninety feet away at third.

But Rojas came up big again, fielding a ball off the bat of Daulton Varsho then firing home to nail the would be championship run by a whisker. That play was close enough for a challenge that showed Dodger catcher Will Smith had slightly lifted his heel off home plate for a brief second as Isiah Kiner-Fahlefa slid into home. Had that play been reversed, (it wasn't), it would have marked the first World Series to end on the reversal of an umpire's call, a walk off reversal if you will.

The baseball gods would truly have been displeased. 

In the top of the 11th, Dodger catcher Will Smith hit a home run off of Shane Bieber, giving them the lead for the first time in the game. 

Then in the bottom of the inning, Vladimir Guererro doubled deep to left field, and was sacrifice-bunted over to third. Yamamoto who was still in the game waked Addison Berger on four pitches, leaving runners at the corners. If that indeed was an intentional/unintentional walk, it was perhaps the most brilliant strategic move of the entire series as the next batter, Alejandro Kirk, grounded into a broken bat, 6-3 double play.

Game, set, and match. for a second consecutive Dodgers World Series Championship.

And with that, the chill rains of fall have come for the Toronto Blue Jays and their fans, who were two outs away from winning the World Series. That's the closest a team has gotten to the Promised Land without entering. a record no one wants to break. 

Despite that, the team and their fans can hold their heads high, I know, I know, easy enough for me to say.

But the team who finished last in their division last year, took the defending champs the distance and then some. As baseball is really a game of millimeters not inches, had just one or two plays gone slightly different, the result may have been reversed.

Most of the people I know rooted for the Blue Jays, for the most part because of their disdain of the Dodgers. There are lots of reasons for that but mainly it's because their team payroll is higher than the GDP of many countries. With that they say, it's impossible for other teams to compete with them. 

Maybe that's true. The Blue Jays are actually up there too, with I believe the fifth highest payroll in MLB. And last year's runner up were the Yankees, what more need I say?

On the other hand, the Dodgers were the first team to repeat as World Series Champions since the Yankees did it in 1999 and 2000. And the team who did it before them? 

Why the Blue Jays of course, in 1992 and '93. 

And the last time a National League team did it was the Cincinnati Reds in the mid-seventies. In between, lots of teams who were not in the top tier of payroll somehow managed to win the World Series.   

So I don't necessarily see the payroll discrepancy to be much of a problem in the game. 

The most satisfying part of the Dodgers' victory was that of all the big stars on that team who make more money than God, the player who was involved in all three of the pivotal plays that won the World Series for LA was their utility infielder Miguel Rojas. He made the final put out in game six, threw out the potential championship run in ninth inning of game seven, and of course hit the tying home run which broke the hearts of all of Canada.

The other most satisfying part is that in the end, there is absolutely no question that the two best teams in baseball this year played each other in the World Series and that in fact, the best team won.

Baseball is a strange game and that's probably why I love it so much. 

For me, with nothing personally invested in either team, the chill rains of the end of baseball for the year will be quite tolerable. Watching, listening to and reading about this year's post season was like eating a magnificent meal and being completely satisfied, leaving no room for dessert. Or like reading a novel that you can't put down which at the end leaves you moved and inspired but also drained. The best of these experiences don't come along every day, or even every year. Sometimes they are once in a generation or even once in a lifetime experiences. 

Which is why we remember them. 

This year's MLB post season, no matter if your team won or more likely lost, will be one for the ages. 

The baseball gods are indeed pleased.

"The Faith of Fifty Million People"

The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people — with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

from The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The nice thing about writing a blog is that you have the freedom to write whatever you please because you don't have an editor looking over your shoulder. The bad part is you don't have an editor looking over your shoulder reigning in your compulsions and keeping you honest. I know my posts tend to come in on the long side and that's putting it mildly. Even so, I often have more material to cover than even I am willing to include in a single post. When that happens, I usually decide it's time for a break and continue with a part two, sometimes even a part three.

In my last post, the one about Shoeless Joe Jackson possibly getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame, I came to a natural end point and left it at that.

Yet, long as that post was, there was still more I wanted to cover on the subject, so I'll be doing that in this post.

There are a couple other reasons. First, it gives me the opportunity to cover one of my favorite subjects, baseball history. Some people assume that because I write about it so often, I must be a rabid baseball fan. The truth is I'm not. I would have a hard time coming up with a list of a dozen current Major League ball players off the top of my head, including those on my hometown teams. I leave that to my son. But I do love the history of the game which ties in, in some curious ways, to the history of this country, especially its urban history, which is what this blog is ostensibly about. At least that's what it says on the masthead.

Writing about baseball also helps me contemplate a topic that has little or nothing to do with the current state of the world, especially American politics, which I've written about ad nauseam for the past ten or so years.

After all, how many ways are there to spell shit show?

Ok now that's off my chest...

One of the things that keeps me interested in the story of the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox, (eight members of whom including their star left fielder Joe Jackson, conspired to intentionally lose the World Series), is not so much the story itself, but the myths surrounding the story and how willing folks are to buy into them, and to what lengths they will go to defend them, over a century after the fact.

That's pretty much par for the course in the game as until fairly recently, baseball history was not considered a subject worthy of serious study. Its major chroniclers were sports writers, albeit some very good ones. The problem is, these writers may have been good story tellers, but they were lousy historians. Putting it another way, baseball traditionally had a lot of Homers, but few if any Thucydides. Consequently, much of baseball history is built upon a string of myths, (including its own creation myth) with a few facts thrown in for good measure. 

Here's a good article written by a real historian, in fact, the official historian of Major League Baseball, John Thorn. In his piece, Thorn cites an article from the Society of the Advancement of Baseball Research, which debunks many of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding the Black Sox Scandal.

However I do have a bone to pick, ok maybe just a nit, with an issue that Thorn brings up.

It's the idea that Babe Ruth "saved" baseball from the existential threat to the game brought on by the Black Sox Scandal. 

I bring that up because when I told my friend Rich about the last post I was about to write, he made the comment: "Babe Ruth saved baseball after the scandal didn't he?" Even though I've gone on record making that claim, I've had my doubts about the subject for a few years now with nothing to really back it up, so I just answered in the affirmative.

My current feeling is not to diminish Babe Ruth's impact on the game of baseball one bit. I agree with John Thorn and countless others that with his free swinging, all-or-nothing approach to hitting the baseball, there is no person who singlehandedly changed the modern game more than the Sultan of Swat. I commented in an earlier post about a list where Thorn ranked in order the 100 most important people in baseball history. As much of a cliché it may seem, you-know-who was number one. 

Jackie Robinson came in at number two. 

Many people would argue that it should be the other way around and I see their point. But my argument, take it or leave it, is that Jackie Robinson was the Neil Armstrong of baseball, that is to say his groundbreaking role as the first black player in modern Major League Baseball history, was the culmination of the efforts of many people, especially the scores of Negro League players who came before him and upon whose shoulders he stood. There is no doubt that he played the role into which he was cast brilliantly and for that he is well deserving of all the accolades. But if it hadn't been Jackie Robinson, like Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, it would have been someone else. 

On the other hand, Babe Ruth changed baseball (some would argue not necessarily for the better*), all by himself.

But did his presence in the game on the heels of baseball's "original sin", its "loss of innocence" and all the other dubious, grandiloquent labels we've come to accept that describe the 1919 World Series Scandal, really save the game from ruin? 

I would argue no, for there is in fact little evidence that the scandal rocked the game to its core and that consequently, the game wasn't in any need of being saved.

Consider the quote at the top of this post from the novel The Great Gatsby. In it, Nick Carroway, the book's narrator is describing a lunchtime meeting where he joins Gatsby and one of his associates, Meyer Wolfsheim. Carroway describes his first impressions of Wolfsheim this way: 

A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.

The trio lunch together and Fitzgerald, in Calloway's voice goes into detail contrasting the demeanor of  Wolfsheim with that of the two Gentiles, Gatsby and Carroway, in words that would never fly today, At one point Gatsby excuses himself leaving Carroway alone with Wolfsheim who directs Carroway's attention to his own cufflinks which turn out to be made of human molars. 

After lunch, Carroway asks Gatsby who this curious character Wolfsheim was, a dentist perhaps? 

"Meier Wolfsheim?" replies Gatsby. The narration continues:

"No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”

Then comes the line quoted at the top of this post.

The character of Meyer Wolfsheim was a none too subtle reference to the real Arthur Rothstein, the New York gangster who played a role in the Black Sox Scandal.

If you can get past the anti-semetic subcontext, the line about playing with the faith of 50 million people is inspired. It was appropriated in addition to me, by Ken Burns as the title to his chapter on the decade of the nineteen teens in his Baseball TV series. 

The quote above is also inaccurate, as it is commonly accepted that no, the 1919 Series wasn't "fixed" by one man, rather that the players themselves came up with the idea.

But what really interests me about the quote is this line: "I remembered of course that the World Series had been fixed in 1919." As has been well noted, this year, 2025 marks the centennial of the publication of  The Great Gatsby. Which brings to mind that at the time of the book's release, the Black Sox Scandal had only been a few years old. The Great Gatsby actually is set in 1922, only one year after the trial and banishment of the eight players involved in the scandal. Yet Fitzgerald's use of the world "remembered" sounds as if Calloway was recalling an event that had happened in the distant past, perhaps a decade or even a generation before. If the event was grave enough to have challenged the faith of 50 million people (just less than one half the U.S. population at the time), AND had happened only one year before, one would think Fitzgerald might have used the term "I knew of course" rather than "I remembered..." 

One might argue that Fitzgerald was living in Paris at the time he was writing Gatsby so he would have been farther removed from the event than had he been stateside. But I have perhaps a more plausible explanation. 

Maybe the Black Sox Scandal wasn't as big a deal with baseball fans as we today assume it was. Could it be that Fitzgerald as well as Nelson Algren, James T. Farrell, Elliot Asinov and other writers who took it on as a subject, used the event as purely a literary device rather than an accurate depiction of history? After all, these authors were first and foremost great story tellers, not historians.

OK that's pure speculation, but there is some empirical evidence that backs up my claim that the 1919 Black Sox Scandal really didn't have an existential impact on the game, attendance at ballparks. 

The data comes from the site: BallparksofBaseball.com

Between 1910 and 1916, total yearly attendance for the 16 Major League teams, eight in each league, ranged between 4.5 and 6.5 million fans. On April 17, 1917, the United States entered World War I but despite that, MLB attendance remained within that range at 4.8 million that year. 

However, attendance took a drastic hit in 1918 as many players were either drafted and entered the service or as was the case of Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams, two of the banished 1919 White Sox players, chose to leave baseball to work for commercial enterprises with government contracts that were deemed "essential" to the war effort. There they spent most of their time playing exhibition baseball. With a good number of ball players off to war or somewhere else, attendance took a big hit, coming in at 2.8 million.

World War I ended in November of that year and MLB attendance bounded back in 1919, slightly topping the previous record of the decade at 6,532,439.

Word of the fixing of the Series didn't become public until just before the end of the 1920 season and that year saw a dramatic increase in attendance, up to 9,120,875. If you know your baseball history, you know that was the year that much to the chagrin of their fans, the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Much of that jump in attendance is a result of New York City alone as attendance for Yankees home games more than doubled from 619,164 in 1919 to a staggering 1,289,422 in 1920. 

You may recall that Ruth started out as a pitcher. That all changed when he moved south to New York because, valuable as he was on the mound, his presence everyday in the lineup as a slugging outfielder was even more valuable. As an everyday presence in the lineup, Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920. He broke the previous record of 29, set by himself the previous year, on July 19, halfway into the season. By the way, the previous record of 27 homers in one year that Ruth broke in 1919, was set by Ned Williamson in 1884. 

Ruth's 54 home run record lasted all of one year. He hit 59 the following year and 60 in 1927, for arguably the best Major League team ever. 

That record stood until another Yankee, Roger Maris broke it in 1961. 

So yes indeed, Babe Ruth's becoming a Yankee had a profound impact on the popularity of baseball, becoming more profound every subsequent year in the decade of the twenties.

But it must be remembered that as a member of the American League, Babe Ruth only played against American League teams, half of the teams in Major League baseball. 

In 1920, the Yankees' National League stadium-mates the New York Giants** saw their 1920 attendance increase by over 200,000 from the previous year. More dramatic, over in Brooklyn, the National League Robins (today's LA Dodgers), attendance went from 360 thousand+ in 1919, to a little over 800 thousand in 1920. 

It wasn't just New York, attendance was up for every team in the majors in 1920, American and National League, except for Detroit for some reason, and for both Boston teams, the Red Sox, for obvious reasons, and their crosstown rivals the Braves. Maybe for them it was a matter of guilt by association. 

Of course Babe Ruth never played against National League teams during the regular season so it can safely be assumed that he had little impact on the attendance at National League parks, at least until later years when players all over the Majors adopted his style of hitting.

Anyway the 1919 Scandal surfaced and became public at the end of the 1920 season so one would expect that if it had a major impact on the game, it would have been reflected in the attendance at ballgames in 1921 and the subsequent years. Indeed, overall attendance did drop by about five percent in 1921. 

Much of that loss can be accounted for by the understandable drop in attendance of 35 percent for White Sox home games alone. Was it out of disgust with the scandal or simply the fact that the team, one of the best in baseball at the time, overnight lost three out of its four starting infielders, two of its three starting outfielders, and two of its starting pitchers?  The White Sox wouldn't become competitive again until the 1950s. And the Red Sox in 1921 continued to hemorrhage fans, about 30 percent of them from '20 to '21, clearly out of disgust with their owner Harry Frazee, who allegedly sold Babe Ruth to finance his theatrical ambitions.

As for the rest of the teams in baseball, 1921 was more or less break even, some teams gained fans, while others lost fans. The same was true in subsequent years but with overall attendance increasing gradually year by year.

Maybe you see something in those numbers that I don't, but to me they don't show any clear indication that baseball as a whole was in serious trouble after the Black Sox Scandal.

In fact, in the years after the 1919 affair, every team in baseball except the Red Sox, turned a profit. That includes the Chicago White Sox. 

Yes, much of that is due to Babe Ruth who for his part, invented and defined the role of baseball superstar, while the game he represented, gladly went along for the ride.

Because of that, the image of Ruth, the Redeemer in pinstripes, fits in nicely with the narrative of the betrayal of the faith of 50 million people brought on by baseball's "Original Sin".

But that's all likely as much a part of baseball mythology as is so much of the legacy of hands down the game's greatest player with one exception. Babe Ruth really was that. 

Yet the loss of innocence part is all hooey. Outside of a parent and child playing catch, baseball at its purest, there never has been anything remotely innocent about the game.

In fact, just like the kid outside the courthouse in Chicago during the trial of the Chicago eight allegedly saying to Shoeless Joe Jackson: "Say it ain't so Joe",***  one of the most important milestones every American youngster experiences, is having to learn that hard lesson. 

In that vein I'll close with a couple excerpts from one of my all-time favorite writings on baseball, the article Mike Royko wrote to honor Jackie Robinson, written on the day the great man died.

Royko was as good storyteller as there was, but this is as real as it gets:

All that Saturday, the wise men of the neighborhood, who sat in chairs on the sidewalk outside the tavern, had talked about what it would do to baseball.

I hung around and listened because baseball was about the most important thing in the world, and if anything was going to ruin it, I was worried.

Most of the things they said, I didn't understand, although it all sounded terrible. But could one man bring such ruin?

They said he could and would. And the next day he was going to be in Wrigley Field for the first time, on the same diamond as Hack, Nicholson, Cavarretta, Schmitz, Pafko, and all my other idols.

 I had to see Jackie Robinson, the man who was going to somehow wreck everything. So the next day, another kid and I started walking to the ballpark early.

...

I've forgotten most of the details of the game, other than that the Dodgers won and Robinson didn't get a hit or do anything special, although he was cheered on every swing and every routine play.
But two things happened I'll never forget. Robinson played first, and early in the game a Cub star hit a grounder and it was a close play.

Just before the Cub reached first, he swerved to his left. And as he got to the bag, he seemed to slam his foot down hard at Robinson's foot.

It was obvious to everyone that he was trying to run into him or spike him. Robinson took the throw and got clear at the last instant.

I was shocked. That Cub, a hometown boy, was my biggest hero. It was not only an unheroic stunt, but it seemed a rude thing to do in front of people who would cheer for a foul ball. I didn't understand why he had done it. It wasn't at all big league.

I didn't know that while the white fans were relatively polite, the Cubs and most other teams kept up a steady stream of racial abuse from the dugout. I thought that all they did down there was talk about how good Wheaties are.****

NOTES:

*They call it the "Deadball Era", when most of the drama of the game took place on the base paths rather than at home plate. It was the style of hitting and baserunning that created this, not the liveliness or lack thereof of the balls. Players could have hit home runs as Ty Cobb proved time and again, but they chose instead to make contact and keep the ball in play to get on base in any way they could, rather than swinging the bat as hard as possible trying to get the ball out of the park, thereby increasing the possibility of striking out, which Babe Ruth did a lot, for his time at least. But to the fans, the home run became the ultimate symbol of success in the game, and the hard-scrabble fight for every base type of play that Cobb and his contemporaries personified, went out of style. Some would say, to a certain degree anyway, it's coming back. I'm all for that. 

**For 10 years the Yankees shared the Polo Grounds with the National League Giants. The original Yankee Stadium, dubbed "The House that Ruth Built" opened in 1923.

***Yet another piece of dubious baseball lore.

****From Jackie's Debut a Unique Day, written by, Mike Royko and published in the Chicago Daily News, October 25, 1972. Do yourself a favor and read the whole piece because its real payoff, the second thing Royko mentions he'd never forget, comes at the very end. You can find it, along with a couple other articles by the great columnist here.