Greetings from the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark and Karl the Kraken are their usual helpful selves today …
Sea monsters. They are not the hardest workers in the room.
Anyway, in addition to the college football goodies noted in our October 11 post, the weekend of October 12-13 holds items of interest sporting-wise. Baseball preps to enter its penultimate stage, with the Detroit Tigers visiting the Cleveland Indians Guardians to see who will vie with the New York Yankees for the American League pennant.
This has been an entertaining, closely fought series, with today promising more of the same as Tigers stud starter Tarik Skubal, one of the 13 innings pitches thus far in the postseason with a gaudy 0.00 ERA to show for his efforts, takes the mound for the Tigers to face the Guardians’ Matthew Boyd who also has yet to yield an earned run in the month of October.
This is the way baseball ought to be; a sport that, despite its annoying habit in recent years of ignoring its traditions, remains steeped in them. Two century-plus rivals that have faced each other over 2300 times in the regular season, with Detroit winning a whopping four games more since the American League’s formation in 1901. This is the first year the two have met in the postseason. How fitting it is that the series has come down to one game.
The winner will face the New York Yankees, baseball’s original evil empire, for the pennant. Regardless of whether one loves or loathes them, the Yankees are one of those rare sports franchises that have transcended sport to become an indelible part of culture. Ruth. Gehrig. DiMaggio. They are as much a part of American history as any of the nation-forming or shaking events that have defined our homeland. The present-day Yankees aren’t at that level, nor will they likely ever be. Yet they are still the Yankees, prepping once again to spend fall’s beginning pursuing the only thing that matters in their history.
Meanwhile, the National League Championship Series is set, with the already-crowned cardiac champion New York Mets coming to the left coast for a bout with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Here, too, is history, albeit of a different sort. For decades, the Dodgers toiled in Brooklyn while the Yankees played bombs away in the Bronx, Brooklyn losing five straight World Series to New York until the Dodgers finally triumphed in 1955. Shortly afterward, their move, along with the then-New York Giants, to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, signaled the full arrival of America as truly a land from sea to shining sea.
The Mets came into existence in 1962 as something of a peace offering to the devastated New York National League fans, the team adopting Dodgers blue and Giants orange as its colors in an effort to unite the previously utterly divided fan bases.
This is what October baseball should be. A chance to reflect, to reminisce. This is history played out before us. MLB itself is doubtless offering sacrifices to the baseball gods for a Dodgers-Yankees World Series, while New Yorkers dream of another subway series between the Mets and Yankees. At the same time, America’s heartland hopes either Cleveland or Detroit can snag the pennant. Regardless of the outcome, they, and we, will come.
