For a moment there, things looked hopeful. But only for a moment…

Well, that was it last night. No more baseball for me in 2026.

It’s not just that my top three fave teams are now eliminated after that painfully anticlimactic game in Los Angeles last night (were the Dodgers even trying to win a third World Series? It looked like it briefly when Ohtani finally hit a homer early on, but that wore off).

For me, what makes it worse is that there are no REAL major-league teams left in contention. I could have accepted the Braves being in it, even though they’re no longer in Boston (and haven’t been in my lifetime). The Cardinals would have been fine, or the Orioles or the Cubs. I could even, with some bitterness, accept the Yankees. They’re a real team, one that you expect to beat other real teams.

But look what’s left:

• Yeah, I know there was a Milwaukee Brewers team as early as 1901. But this one is an expansion club, trading on an old name. That’s not legit. If the team didn’t exist when I started collecting baseball cards, I can’t like it — I’m just too conservative that way. It’s why I’m a baseball fan, rather than a follower of snowboarding. Baseball is about Tradition! Nor do I accept professional baseball uniforms that are obviously based on Cub Scout uniforms. And not even traditional Cub Scout uniforms, for that matter. Look at those hats. Those are 1970s-style (one of the worst terms you can use to describe clothing) hats. Here’s the kind of hat I wore, when Cubs were Cubs. Sure, there’s no question that bunch of hairy Webelos outplayed the two-year world champs. Still doesn’t satisfy me.
• For similar reasons, I might have been able to accept the Cleveland Indians. But tradition has been flouted along the Cuyahoga in another way. And y’all know I’ve not a supporter of Identity Politics, on the left or the right. It’s a little bit cool that they slyly kept the last five letters of their name, so if a player stands with his left side turned toward you, you can be fooled into thinking that it’s Pedro Cerrano in an updated uni. But that still doesn’t cut it. I’m not crazy about updated unis, either. Sorry I had to mention a fictional player there, but I just don’t watch these guys, so I can’t name any of the real ones.
• Tampa Bay? Are you kidding me? Hey, I used to live in Tampa, when I was in high school, and yeah, I saw a lot of professional baseball — but only in the spring. And they were real teams — the Reds (with Charlie Hustle, and rookie Johnny Bench), and the Cardinals (it’s when I first saw my wife’s cousin Tim McCarver, and his teammates Bob Gibson, rookie Steve Carlton, Joe Torre, Lou Brock and Curt Flood). We also had the Mets in the Bay Area, but, you know, expansion club — although an early one. (Also, I’ll never forget that Tom Seaver refused to even turn to look at my little brother when he was running alongside him begging for an autograph.)

I suppose there’s some small chance that I’ll hear about something amazing happening between now and Halloween, causing me to tune in briefly. But from now on, my baseball energy is focused on hoping for the Red Sox in 2027.

To make me sadder, I heard later that Sonny Gray was mad about being pulled. Maybe he had a point; I dunno.

I’m not blaming my Bosox, mind you. I mean, I’m not disappointed in them. I’m just… disappointed.

Not to make it to October, to fall just an hour or two short… How do I express it? October is my favorite month, the month when the weather starts getting sane, the month I associate with my favorite band (which of course is named, you know…), the first month I learned to spell.

To explain that last item… when I was in kindergarten and being introduced to the alphabet (moms didn’t play educational tapes during the third trimester in those days), we had a special program, and a dozen of us stood up in front of the parents and spelled aloud the names of our birth months. I can still do it:

O-C-T-O-B-E-R!

See? And who cares about those other months?

October’s great. Sure, it has its flaws. To a disturbing proportion of this country’s population, it suggests, well, football. Not real football, but the American kind.

But… that is counterbalanced (and more than counterbalanced for me, since I simply ignore the football) by Baseball’s Greatest Month!

And I was very much looking forward to watching the Sox march through O-C-T-O-B-E-R in triumph.

Didn’t happen. There they were, facing the eternal foe, the Bronx Bombers. And apparently, they never had a chance… despite having swept the pin-stripers in a four-game series earlier this year, at the start of their phenomenal, record-tying streak. I mean, they got stomped.

And yet this week, in the contest for all the marbles (or at least, what they had to win to have a chance to win all the marbles), they went into a best-of-3 Wild Card series and were utterly crushed on Tuesday night, then beaten more or less as badly the next night. Both games were in the Bronx, of course. (And where is the justice in that?)

It was an utterly shocking exhibition. Two utterly shocking exhibitions. Anyway, to get this over, some random thoughts on what happened:

• Problem was, they peaked too early, and lost their edge. After that amazing July, in which they won 15 games in a row — tying the franchise record set in 1946 — they kind of settled into a normal pattern in August. Then, worse, they got to the point where they were assured a Wild Card slot, and were still well behind the top two in the division, and they had nothing left to strive for, until the season was over. No one announced it, but it’s like the official goal in those last weeks was Don’t Get Injured. Not that guys didn’t play as hard as they could. You couldn’t accuse Caleb Durbin of doing that, ever. And Trevor Story was the fireball he always is, once he got back from the injured list. And Ceddanne Rafaela is always a hero. But overall, the team was no longer reaching as hard as it had in, say, July.
• Before that streak, you’ll recall, was a long, dark slump that resulted in the firing of Manager Alex Cora. I didn’t think the slump was Cora’s fault. But that’s what the front office apparently believed, and as it happened, things started picking up after Interim Manager Chad Tracy came from the farm system to take over. Tracy has done a great job since coming on board. And I join Dan Shaughnessy in the question he posed back in August: “Isn’t it about time the Red Sox removed ‘interim’ from manager Chad Tracy’s job title…?” Yes, it is. He’s done a great job.
• As mentioned, the team has been plagued by injuries, although it looked like most everybody was back for the post-season, which is another reason to be sad that there will be no October for Boston. Roman Anthony has been back for awhile, although I say (perhaps unfairly, because I’m just testifying to what I’ve seen rather than running the numbers) that I don’t know how much difference that was going to make — even if he hadn’t gotten hurt again. I just haven’t seen that much since his return. Nothing like what was expected at the start of the season, before his long convalescence. I was much more impressed by what Trevor Story has done since getting back. By the way, in these last two disastrous nights, Story was responsible for one of the two most impressive offensive moves that we saw. Both hit dramatically timed doubles that should have gotten things moving, but didn’t. By the way the most impressive thing the Sox did defensively this week was the startling double play executed by Durbin in the first game. Take a look. Wow. I don’t think anybody saw that coming. Look at Payton Tolle and Adley Rutschman celebrating at the end of the clip, the catcher’s eyes popping out. (Just thought of another great defensive play. See Nate Eaton’s throw to home in the video below.)
• Speaking of returns from injury, ace pitcher Garrett Crochet made a wonderfully dramatic appearance from the bull pen in the middle of last night’s game. First time I’d seen him since the start of the season (he had even stayed out of the dugout during the long streak because he was afraid he’d jinx it — you know ballplayers), and I hadn’t read he was back on the roster, so when he appeared it felt to me like the hero had risen from the dead. Unfortunately, he “died” again almost immediately. In his defense, most of what the Yankees achieved in that blowout inning was due to two errors by usually dependable, worthy ballplayers — Willson Contreras and Rutschman. But still, it was Crochet’s light — and the brief hope it offered — that were snuffed out.

I’ll stop there. What do I know, anyway? But I’m sorry to see it. If I went on, I might start moaning about the Yankees fans, whom I find particularly unpleasant. Especially that one guy I saw with a shirt mentioning the Bambino. Who does that, when one’s guests are the Red Sox? Shocking…

At the moment, my second favorite team is trailing the Braves in that deciding game. If the Phillies lose this one, I’ll turn all my baseball attention toward the Dodgers starting Saturday. If they go all the way, I’ll be quite happy. But not as happy as I’d have been had the Red Sox kept going…

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And we turn to the world of baseball…

Which is experiencing an annual pause, the All-Star Break, which I always hate. And especially this year.

My boys from Boston have a remarkable streak going — nine wins in a row, by far the longest in baseball at the moment. But now they’re resting, getting soft, losing the feeling of the streak — or so I fear.

And the first team they’ll face when the games start back is… the Tampa Bay Rays. As you can see above, those are the guys who are leading the AL East, and are three games ahead of the Yankees.

Fine, I say to buck myself up. The White Sox are leading their division (as you can also see above). And the Red Sox swept them last week, in Chicago. Hey, and remember a few days ago when I celebrated the fact that they were no longer in the Cellar? Well, now they’re up another notch, in third place.

But, I worry: That’s when the Bosox had the big Mo going, before this blasted Break. Now they’re sitting around… except for Contreras, Chapman, Rafaela and Suárez, who are in this thing today.

But, back on the first hand, the Tampa boys will be cold, too. Right? And maybe some guys will be off Boston’s IR list by then. Right?

I just wish the Break was over. I need some baseball. REAL baseball, not silly, gimmicky exhibitions…

Bad news for the Phillies, but good for the Braves.

This one almost snuck by me yesterday, until I ran across a live press conference about it on my MLBtv app…

You know about the Saturday Night Massacre in Boston. Just three days later, the bosses in Philadelphia got rid of the manager of my second favorite team — which was at the bottom of its division in the NL, just as the Sox were in the cellar of the AL East.

I’ve told you about my hierarchy of fave teams. Now I’m starting to worry a bit about Dave Roberts. But not really. They’re not only leading their division, but they’re tied with the Yankees for the best season so far in the big leagues, at .667. Which is good. I like Dave.

You know who’s got the best? My former favorite team, the Braves (see image above). They’re at .700. You know, the team MLBtv won’t let me watch, ever. It’s gotten to where I don’t think I can name a single player I used to watch who’s still in Atlanta.

At least I can still see Freddie Freeman out in L.A. — along with Mookie, who of course should still be in Boston…

The Dodgers are more than OK…

Just before Cora got fired.

I was pretty excited yesterday when the Red Sox stomped the Orioles, and kept on stomping: 17-1. I joined the game late. In the 9th inning, for some reason, the Orioles pitcher was throwing like a slow-pitch softpall pitcher.They must have told him not to waste his arm when there was no chance. I’d never seen anything like it, but maybe that happens a lot. It was only recently that I got to see baseball again on a regular basis, after decades of deprivation.

The Sox had gone into the game 9-17, and were in the cellar of the American League East, so I was very happy. So were the players.

An hour or two after the game, my phone informed me that Red Sox Manager Alex Cora and six of his coaches had just been fired by the front office.

Great game, guys! Now go away, all of yez…

I’m still not sure what happened. Sure management was unhappy with the way the season has started. So was I. But what timing! Surely the decision had been made ahead of the game. Do you suppose there was a discussion along the lines of, “Do we want to fire him right now, after THIS game?” If there was, we know the answer to the question.

Did Cora know during that game that this was coming? Did the coaches? Taking it further, did the players? Is that why they won so big? Were they winning it for Alex?

Again, I dunno. But when I saw this headline, I was anxious to reach Shaughnessy’s take on it:

It wasn’t Alex Cora’s fault the Red Sox roster stinks, and he shouldn’t have been fired over it

Before reading it, I agreed (on an emotional level; I can’t say I KNOW how much of the fault was or wasn’t his) that he shouldn’t have been fired over it. I like Alex.

But I disagreed that the Red Sox roster stinks. Except for Alex Bregman, it seems to me that they had all their best players still — and Roman Anthony was back from his injury. This was the same team (except for Bregman) that won all those games in that surge last summer, after they got rid of Devers.

The first game of this season, I saw what I was hoping to see — the Sox doing what I thought they could do. But I hadn’t really seen that team since then. Not until yesterday.

So yeah, there was a problem, and something needed to be done, but this?

Shaughnessy’s column, like the headline, swung back and forth between things that I agreed with, and things that ticked me off. Shaughnessy’s good at that.

I enjoyed his lede:

There you go.

The Saturday Night Massacre.

Settling All Family Business….

Yep.

But then it’s back and forth, good and bad (from my perspective). Examples:

I’m all for shaking things up, and understand that you can’t fire all your players in late April, but put me down as one who did not think Cora was the problem with this Fenway F Troop.

It’s the roster. It’s the 26 guys Henry and Breslow gave Cora. That’s the problem…

F Troop? Getoutta here!

Cora is the same manager who won 119 games for you in 2018. He’s the third-winningest manager in franchise history, a guy who relates to players, knows when the other team is tipping pitches, and is better than most when it comes to situations, matchups, and day-to-day lineups.

Cora is not the one who traded Mookie Betts, let Xander Bogaerts walk, and got no players in return for the salary dump of Rafael Devers….

I’m with ya! As long as you’re not saying they should have kept Devers, and I don’t think you are…

Cora’s not the one who spent on the wrong players (Masataka Yoshida, Trevor Story), traded Chris Sale at exactly the wrong time, and pulled away from every big-name free agent last winter.

Hey! Trevor’s one of my favorites! He’s a clutch hitter, time after time!

Cora is not the one who failed to give Alex Bregman a no-trade clause, then said, “If Alex Bregman wanted to be in Boston, he’d be in Boston.”

OK, if that’s the way you heard it, and it’s right, I agree. I’m ever-mindful you know a thousand times as much about the Sox as I ever will…

But you know, this was uncalled-for:

Is it Alex Cora’s fault that a Red Sox third base position once filled by the likes of Frank Malzone, Wade Boggs, Devers, and Bregman is now manned by 5-foot-6-inch Caleb Durbin, he of the .165 batting average and one home run (off a utility player in mop-up duty Saturday)?..

Hey, I miss Bregman, too, but that’s just mean. No wonder so many don’t like Dan. He didn’t need to mock the new guy like that.

Anyway, to update, the Sox won again today, 5-3. So I’m happy about that. But everybody should note: This winning streak — if that’s what it is — started with Alex still in the dugout. And that was a big win…

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Now this is what I call a sports page…

Well, I managed to rush home from school fast enough to catch the last inning-and-a-half of the Red Sox opener in Cincinnati. Consequently, I got to see a bit of baseball history as it happened.

I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know about this ABS thing. (Oh, I remember talk about it, but I missed when it became a done deal.) But it came up in the ninth, to the benefit of the Sox.

Roman Anthony had been living up to the hype all through the game. With Bregman gone and Anthony back from being on the injured list, the scribes down in spring training had really been building him up, with such headlines as:

‘He looks like a superhero’: Roman Anthony is already the face of the Red Sox. He hasn’t even played a full season.

When I saw him come up in the ninth, I learned that he’d already had three hits in this game. He was about to do something else, something that no member of his team had ever done.

He had a full count on him, and then the ump called a strike to ruin the outfielder’s excellent day. Anthony immediately appealed the call. I was all like “What?,” but it turned out this was a thing. The verdict of the machine was clear — the pitch was a couple of inches low. He took his base.

Consequently, he and Marcelo Mayer ended up scoring to increase the Boston lead from 1-0 to 3-0. Then Aroldis Chapman took the mound to make the end of all Reds hope official. Very satisfactory. Everything went just as it should, unless you were a Reds fan (which I used to be, back when Johnny Bench was a rookie and Pete Rose still sported a crewcut, but no more).

But back to this ABS thing. I’m trying to make up my mind.

On the one hand, I generally don’t like innovation in baseball. Far as I’m concerned, the last good change in the game was when Branch Rickey brought up Jackie Robinson. That was six years before I was born. Beyond that, I like the old ways. You know me Al.

Sure, umpires experience fits of blindness, but I feel that respecting their calls is like respecting the game. I don’t like to see them dissed like this. I’m a law-and-order guy.

On the other hand, it clearly was a ball, so truth won out. Should we defer to the ump to the extent of denying Anthony his rightful walk?

I dunno. I guess I end up on the side of the machines here, but I don’t feel good about it. Although something the announcers said makes me feel a little better. They noted that Anthony has a great eye, and they speculated that any time he appeals a pitch, he’s likely to come out on top. (He’d been looking forward to the new rule.) And isn’t that fair? If the kid has an eye like Ted Williams, shouldn’t we respect that?

Setting this historical footnote aside, let’s turn to the game, and where we now stand for this season. Dan Shaughnessy allowed himself to indulge in a bit of encouragement today. After 12 grafs of sharing historical anecdotes showing what an old hand he is, he condescended to toss this bone to the fans:

Overreact all you like, Sox fans. After one game, The Red Sox are tied with the Yankees and Orioles for first place in the AL East, Crochet’s ERA is 0.00, Chapman is tied for the MLB lead in saves, Anthony is batting .750, Marcelo Mayer is hitting 1.000 and Sonny Gray — who has never lost a game with the Red Sox — gets the ball Saturday against a Reds team that hasn’t scored a single run this season.

Yeah, I’ll settle for that. Let’s keep up the good work.

A good start…

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Happy opening day! Baseball has begun! The Red Sox face the Reds in Cincinnati at 4:10 today! (And as a preview, the Yankees demolished the Giants last night, 7-0.)

I hope I get back from class (which starts at 4:25) today in time to catch the last innings.

Aren’t we blessed?

I ran across this image of the Babe and Shoeless Joe, and wanted to use it somewhere. Might as well be here…

At some point during the extra innings last night — or perhaps it was after midnight this morning — I thought about sending out a Tweet about the tense, exciting, protracted 7th game of the World Series. With everything in doubt, I would have said something like:

Whoever loses this game is going to be far more disappointed than they would be losing any Series I’ve seen up to now…

I didn’t post it because I didn’t want to recognize that my Dodgers might lose. But really, truly, anything could have happened until that very last second when Alejandro Kirk’s bat broke, and my favorite Dodger Mookie Betts scooped it up, hustled to second then threw over to Freddie Freeman for the double play, ending it all. (Here’s a great picture of that moment, with Freddie towering over the Blue Jays’ catcher, leaping with joy while Kirk seems to do a sort of dance of sadness on first base.)

Both teams deserved to win. And those Toronto fans, as well as the players, seemed to want it more. So I felt bad for them. Too bad the last game wasn’t in L.A.

On the other hand, my sympathy had been somewhat tempered because I was sick of the announcers going on and on about how the poor things hadn’t seen their team win a championship for 32 years. They kept saying it. At one point, there was this montage as they cut from one anxious, longing face in the crowd, while yammering again about those 32 years.

You know what happened 32 years ago? I do. So does John Smoltz. At my age, that’s like 18 months ago. They had won the year before that, too! I had been there in Atlanta for the first game of that previous Series, and I’ve always thought it was cool to have been present to hear a foreign anthem played at a World Series — even though they ended up beating my Braves. But come on, guys! You win your first Series ever, and then you win again the next year, and what — you expect to win them all now?

But still, I sympathized. So when I spoke afterward with my brother-in-law, who had rooted for Toronto, I was able to offer my condolences sincerely, and tell him that his guys had deserved to win. But of course, so had the Dodgers. One thing we agreed on — if everybody in America had watched this whole amazing Series, baseball might once again approach something like its former popularity. And America could return to its former greatness.

I’ll just toss out a few things that made this Series wonderful:

• Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The pitcher who is made of iron. As Chelsea Janes wrote, “Yamamoto threw 2⅔ innings of scoreless relief to close out the 5-4 win a day after he threw six innings in Game 6, a performance that combined with his complete game in Game 2 made him the World Series MVP.” Oh, and you know that complete game? He went all nine innings in the game in his last game before that.
• Guys who showed they appreciated getting a chance. I’m thinking about Miguel Rojas, whom I hadn’t seen (or at least hadn’t noticed) in the series before Game 6, who was falling down when he through the ball to Will Smith (because the bases were loaded) to barely, just barely saving the game and the Series, and the season — one of many such moments in Game 7. Also, he hit a rare (for him) home run tying the game. I’m also thinking of Andy Pages, who had just been put in at center field, jumping on top of Kiké Hernández to catch the ball on the wall and… again, saving the game, etc. He was so happy, but he seemed a little worried when he looked back and saw Kiké lying there possibly dead. But he was OK.
• Shohei Ohtani, of course. By this time, his amazing performances in previous days were overshadowed, but hey, he did pitch again — if not as wonderfully as before. And he did have two hits. Which ain’t nothing.
• Will Smith. There’s nothing harder in baseball than catching, and he did it every inning of every game in the Series, including the 11-inning final game and the 18-inning nightmare several days earlier. Try doing that in a squatting position without committing a Series-losing fumble of a wild pitch. He caught 73 innings, “the most by any catcher in World Series history.” Never mind such shining moments as, you know, hitting the homer that put the Dodgers in the lead.

I could, as usual, go on and on. But let me mention some of the other guys for a moment:

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — That surname means “Warrior,” by the way. Nobody wanted it more than this guy, who underlined his yearning by writing the name of Diós in the dirt each time he came to bat, and hit as though the Lord was definitely taking his side. And he played some tenacious D, such as his diving catch on the first-base line, and that ball he fielded and threw to second in time to have it thrown back to him for a key double play. No one was more passionate, more celebratory about his own achievements and those of his compadres. And the saddest moment came when the camera caught him apparently weaping in the dugout when it was over.
• Addison Barger — That guy was a terror (from a Dodgers perspective). The internet claims he’s NOT related to Sonny Barger of Hell’s Angels infamy, but think about it — can’t you get “Sonny” as a nickname if you’re called “AddiSON?” Did you notice how several times, Dodgers baserunners decided NOT to try to take an extra base for the simple fact that the hit had gone to right field? That’s because Barger has a cannon for an arm, as he demonstrated to L.A.’s woe a couple of times with throws to home and third base.
• George Springer. The guy was really racked up. He had a bad arm, a bad leg and a bad haircut. But he stood there at the plate and tried, although quite a few swings looked like they could be his last. Yet he managed to hit with very good effect (from a Toronto perspective) a couple of times, and once for an RBI.
• Alejandro Kirk. First, he’s not as short as he looks. He’s 5’8″, but looks shorter because he weighs 245 pounds. I think it’s all muscle, the way he hits. At first he looks clumsy, swinging so hard that he sometimes falls down. But thing his next swing sends the ball over the wall…

OK, that’s enough. I know I’m getting a little like Shooter when he was in rehab, raving so about the game that they had to put the straitjacket on him. Like Shooter, I love “the greatest game ever invented.” He’s just confused about which game that is.

And now it’s over. We have the long, empty winter ahead of us. But this Series gave me enough to tide me through those months — even though the Red Sox weren’t in it.

If there’s another baseball fan out there somewhere, perhaps you’d like to add some words…

It occurred to me that some of you might have thought the other day, “Why is this Red Sox fan so excited about a Dodgers game?”

I’m sure this has worried you. It’s no doubt keeping you awake at night.

So I’ll explain, as I try to do everything. I don’t like having ambiguities linger on my blog.

I’ll explain it with the hats. My father had a huge collection of hats in his later years — most of them related either to the Navy or golf tournaments he played in. I’ve adopted a similar practice (which you are certainly not to assume is a sign of advanced age). About half or more of my hats have to do with baseball.

My favorites have to do with the Red Sox. I have three I currently wear. That’s my best, special-occasion Red Sox hat above. Unlike my other baseball lids, this is a REAL cap — not one of those cheap, one-size-fits-all jobs. I had to go to Lansdowne Street, in the shadow of Fenway itself, and try them on until one fit perfectly.

Where other hats have a strap at the very back that can be adjusted to various sizes, this one has a tiny Red Sox logo, blown up slightly at right, which my wife and daughters think is cute, and I find to be quite tasteful.

I loved the Red Sox long before I was specifically a fan of the team. I have loved their hats more or less ever since I learned that my name started with a B — so, a while. I felt early on that any hat with a B on it was pretty much meant for me.

Add to that the matter of aesthetics. I think it’s a beautiful hat. Dark blue — whether indigo or Navy or whatever the specific nomenclature — is my favorite color. It goes best with either white or a deep, rich red — both of which are present in the B.

Then there’s the fact that over the years, I’ve been aware of and impressed by various Red Sox stars — Babe Ruth (before the Curse), Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Carl Yastrzemski, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Pudge Fisk, Mookie Betts, Big Papi Ortiz, and our own Jackie Bradley Jr. Oh, wait — I forgot Cy Young.

I was also aware of it as a real baseball team with long-term history, dating back more than half a century before my birth. That matters to me. History confers legitimacy.

Then I went to visit Boston for a few days, and loved it — especially the perfect night when we sat there in the Fenway bleachers, right behind Jackie Bradley Jr., and literally ate peanuts and Cracker Jack while we watched the Sox thump the Yankees. I’m not going to blaspheme and call it a religious experience, but as plain old secular ones go, it was pretty special.

Finally, when I shelled out all that money this year to watch Major League Baseball constantly the whole season, my love grew stronger. I watched other teams, but mainly enjoyed and worried over the Sox — my favorites Ceddane Rafaela, Alex Bregman, Jarren Duran, Trevor Story, Garrett Crochet, Aroldis Chapman — well, and all the rest.

They had a good run this year, but it was not to be, as they lost to… oh, let’s not name them — in the Wild Card series.

You might think I’d stop watching at that point, but I actually love baseball, and not just one team. That means enjoying all MLB (and sometimes less glorious) teams. But I do have a hierarchy of preferences, which usually keeps me watching a team I like, if only a little bit in a bad year, all the way through the World Series.

My second fave club is the Phillies.

It’s not the P or the hats or the uniforms in particular, although the one you see above is my fave among the ones they wear. It’s more about a family connection, combined with the way the post-seasons have broken the last few years.

My wife’s first cousin Tim McCarver played the last few years of his career with the Phils. Sure, you might associate him with the Cardinals, and so did I. I was a fan of his when he played for St. Louis in those early glory years — long before I became a bigger fan of his cousin. But by the time he stopped playing ball and started his new career in broadcasting, he had been with the Phillies long enough for a strong identification to develop, in my mind anyway. Besides, he had Steve Carlton — also a former fellow Card — with him (I met Carlton the first time I even saw Tim play in person, down in St. Pete in 1969). It just seemed natural to cheer for their team.

Also, in these recent dark years when baseball disappeared on free broadcast TV, I only got to see ANY baseball by watching the post-season games, which TV deigned to carry still. And the Phillies made regular appearances on that stage the last few years. Thus, I became a fan of the surly Bryce Harper, plus Kyle Schwarber, Brandon Marsh, Alex Bohm, and J.T. Realmuto.

That continued and deepened this season, when MLB.TV finally gave me generous access to baseball every day and night of the season.

But alas, the Phillies fell to my third-favorite team. And they’re still in it (despite the shock of the playoffs, in which they got mistreated by a team I NEVER follow).

My attachment to the Dodgers is a tad more complicated.

First of all, note the B. I of course have no interest in wearing LA on my hat, when I can wear a B. Besides, it goes to my belief in history conferring legitimacy. I think of them as the Brooklyn team that just recently moved (when I was three years old) to another city. Enriching that history we have Jackie Robinson, not to mention Pee Wee Reese, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella, and, if you’ll allow one remembered as an owner more than a player, Branch Rickey. Also, they were my Dad’s favorite team.

Today, in that less-reputable West Coast location, they’re still a great team, with Mookie Betts (who should still be in Boston), Freddy Freeman (the only memorable Brave I still get to see, now that MLB.TV lets me watch anything but the Braves), Kike and Teoscar Hernandez and the gentleman I referred to earlier, who is today’s nearest approximation to Babe Ruth… Shohei Ohtani.

Here’s hoping they do better tonight against those strangers from the Great White North…

 

I would have posted this Friday night when it happened, but the item in the Post was only brought to my attention yesterday.

It says things I might have said if I were more confident in my ability to comment on baseball. But on Friday night, I was just saying “Wow,” and not going much beyond that.

Now, I find it being said by an actual professional sportswriter, and said in these words: “Shohei Ohtani just played the greatest game in baseball history.” Sure, Chelsea Janes isn’t Ring Lardner, and she’s young, but she’s The Washington Post‘s “national baseball writer,” and Ring Lardner’s dead. So I’m going with what she said, since the same idea was kinda roaming around in my gut when it happened.

Hers was a daring statement. Journalists don’t usually go out on a limb this far, because they know other journalists will snicker and give them the business. But I think that in this case, what that headline says may well be right on the mark. And that fact alone is pretty exciting.

Here, in part, is how she supports her claim:

Convinced? If you’re not, you probably missed the game…

The celebration in the dugout when Yoshida brought in those two runs.

I’m still feeling the glow of last night, when the Boston Red Sox beat the New York Yankees in possibly the most intense game I’ve seen in my life between these ultimate rivals (I can’t compare it to the Summer of ’49, since I wasn’t around yet).

I was glad to have recently renewed my Boston Globe subscription (having dropped it back in August as a cost-saving measure, and immediately signed back on when they reached out to me with an offer that couldn’t been refused — they’re good at that). That meant that this morning I could relive it not only through an indepth main story about the game, but a sidebar about the man (Masataka Yoshida) who hit the single that pulled the Sox ahead after six innings of the Yankees leading, and a Dan Shaughnessy column about how the Sox’s left-handed ace (Garrett Crochet) dominated the Bronx titans for almost eight full innings.

That’s not counting that one homer Anthony Volpe hit off him in the second, which is what put the Yankees ahead for most of the game. This caused me to mull dark thoughts for several innings, fantasizing about banning home runs. I hate the things, anyway. They completely sidestep the game of baseball. Defenders have no chance to deal with them in any way, once the ball has left the bat. Baseball is about carefully balanced skills between players, not about standing there watching the ball go bye-bye. From now on, I almost tweeted (but was too engrossed in the game to bother), anything that goes over the fence should be no more than a ground-rule double — and the hitter should pay for the ball. (Yeah, I know the cost of one ball is nothing to these millionaires — and no one makes more than the big home-run hitters), but there’s a principle here.

Then, I forgot it all when Yoshida hit that beautiful single in the 7th and drove in Ceddanne Rafaela (my favorite player) and Nick Sogard — putting the Sox in the lead. Where they stayed. Note that, while they sometimes hit them, the Sox don’t need taters to win ball games — because they’re real baseball players.

Note that this happened in New York — where the second game of the series will be played tonight. And if the Sox don’t put it away tonight (and I worry about them doing it without Crochet), they’ll have to win again tomorrow. And all three games are played in New York, not in beloved Fenway.

Whoever wins the series goes on to face the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East division championship.

But let’s not look ahead yet. Let’s look back, at Shaughnessy’s column yesterday morning, before the Sox won the first game. I almost posted it yesterday, but it’s just as good now. It’s important to share because — well, you know about how I love history, and mourn the fact that ignorance of history is destroying the country I love? Well, history is key to fully appreciating baseball. Here’s the column:

Red Sox-Yankees in the playoffs. Does it get any better than this?

Of course, the Globe needs subscribers to survive (which is why they keep offering me those deals), so they might not let you read it for free.

So I will provide you with enough of an excerpt for you to get the idea of why this thing happening in New York right now (and not in Fenway, in case I haven’t mentioned that) is so important:

Red Sox-Yankees. Again.

Do we need to educate the young’uns and remind everyone what this means?

Red Sox-Yankees is an all-timer. It’s Harvard vs. Yale, Kennedy vs. Nixon, Athens vs. Sparta.

It’s Ohio State-Michigan, Army-Navy, Trump-Comey.

It is the ultimate American sports rivalry and we are getting it in the first round of baseball’s ever-expanding playoffs….

The relationship between these franchises goes back to Creation. The Boston Americans (hello, Red Sox) were part of the upstart American League in 1901 and the New York Highlanders (now the Yankees) joined them in the “Junior Circuit” two years later. Since that time, the two have walked hand-in-hand with history, usually at the painful expense of the Boston franchise.

The Red Sox won five of the first 15 World Series, then sold their soul in a Yankee swap when New York owner Jacob Ruppert swindled Boston owner Harry Frazee (a New Yorker with designs on Broadway shows), acquiring pitcher/outfielder George Herman “Babe” Ruth for $100,000 and a mortgage on Fenway Park.

The fallout from that hideous deal lasted 86 years. In that stretch, the Yankees won 26 World Series while the Red Sox won zero. Making matters worse, many of New York’s rings came at the expense of Boston. A three-time champ with the Red Sox, young Babe became the greatest player in baseball history, won four championships with the Yankees, then handed the Bronx baton to Lou Gehrig, who passed it on to Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter, and today’s Ruthian Aaron Judge — 53 home runs, American League batting champ in 2025….

It goes on like that. You get the idea. It’s great, and educational.

I love baseball so much…

You know what? That was a blurry screenshot above. You should watch the full inning when it all turned around last night…

As a reborn sports fan — well, baseball fan — I’m now making like a color commentator, thinking back to the time that so-and-so did a similar thing decades ago. OK, so I do that on all subjects. But now I’m doing it with sports, or A sport, which indicates it’s really become a part of me.

It happened last night. Did you see the Red Sox game last night? Well, you should have. If you missed it, you can read about it in The Boston Globe this morning. They based their main game story on this one play that sparked the memory for me.

(By the way, yes: You can actually read this story about something that happened last night in the actual paper this morning. Like in the legendary days of newspapers. This is one of the things I love about The Globe. It’s why, after ending my subscription recently under various pecuniary pressures, I signed back up almost immediately when they offered me another sweet deal, bless them. I can now return to watching the game before I go to bed at night, and reading excellent analysis of it at breakfast when I get up. What a fascinating modern age we live in.)

What happened is this: I had been watching the game some time before dinner, and things were looking good. I think the Sox were ahead of Cleveland something like 4-1. When my iPad informed me at the table that the score was now 7-7 in the eighth, I got right up and went back to the game. I saw an inning and a half of excellent baseball.

But the main thing was this one play in the bottom of the eighth. Not a homerun, but a true baseball play, the kind worth remembering.

Here’s what happened:

There were 2 outs. The go-ahead run, Curaçaoan outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela, was on third. This was the Sox’s chance to go ahead and chalk up a win. But obviously a sacrifice fly wouldn’t bring in that run, with two outs. Alex Bregman, 31, steps up and hits with “the worst swing I took all night,” but pulls a grounder down the line. The Cleveland third-baseman has to lunge toward the line and snag it just as it’s getting by him, then somehow overcome his momentum to turn back for a long throw to first.

Meanwhile, Bregman is chugging. He knows he’s not exactly pinch-runner material at any time, and especially since his quad injury that put him out for a while in the last couple of months. Manager Alex Cora is quite frank with him about his lack of speed. But he knows the stakes, and he pushes with all he’s got, risking that quad.

And he makes it, and Rafaela goes home, and it’s 8-7. Before the inning ends, three more runs are scored, which might minimize the moment in your mind if you’re just looking at the final score. But those extra runs wouldn’t have come if Bregman had not beat out the throw to first. (Here’s video, although I couldn’t find an embed code.)

So of course, I immediately thought of The Slide — slowpoke 1st-baseman Sid Bream’s miraculous run home, just barely beating out Barry Bonds’ throw to the plate, in that instant winning the 1992 pennant for the Braves (you know, that team the MLB won’t let me watch any more). That night, Bream was a year older than Bregman is now.

OK, the stakes weren’t quite as high, but it felt a lot the same to me last night. And don’t dismiss it. It’s September, and that sprint to 1st kept the Sox a hair’s fraction behind the Yankees. They’re both 2.5 games from catching Toronto and leading the AL East (New York is a statistically behind Boston because while the Sox have won one more game, they’ve also lost one more; I don’t know what the Yankees have been doing instead of playing ball games). This is no time to be dropping one to Cleveland just because the usually infallible Garrett Crochet is having a bad night.

So that’s why Bregman ran so fast…

Wet down your hair and WIN this thing!

Or at least, you know, I do.

As y’all may know, this is the only time of the year that I care about sports, so it’s pretty essential. And who could possibly care about a World Series between… the Texas Rangers (and not the Texas Rangers we used to cheer for in the old Westerns) and… I dunno, some team named for a type of rattlesnake?

Whereas the Phillies — well, they’re like, maybe, my third or fourth favorite team in baseball. When I was a kid I used to cheer for the St. Louis Cardinals, featuring Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Joe Torre, Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver, who — unknown to me at the time — would later be my cousin-in-law. But then, after I married his first cousin, Tim played for the Phillies. So, you know, they’re right up there.

Aside from that, they’ve been around since 1883. They’re a real professional baseball team. If anything in our troubled country is about tradition, it’s baseball. It really brings out my Tory sensibilities. I mean, when you’re talking baseball, I’m practically a Jacobite.

Of course, if you want to get all philosophical, in a fair and just universe, the Phillies wouldn’t be in it, either. In fact, there would be no “it” to be in. It’s obvious that the Braves are the rightful owners of the National League pennant (and the Orioles of the AL’s). I mean, consult the standings. There should BE no playoffs, unless two teams have tied records in the regular season. And nobody was even close to the Braves.

But there are playoffs. And now, since in a degraded America there is no baseball on any station I get on my TV until October, I confess that I’m a bit invested in them.

And the Phillies need to be in the World Series.

Hey, don’t listen to me. Check this piece from The Washington Post this morning: “The Phillies are what makes October baseball great. Can they win Game 7?”

Consider some wisdom from that piece:

Here’s the thing: the 84-win Diamondbacks may be a nice team with some nice players. That’s cute. The Phillies? They have stars. They have thump. They make noise…

And therefore, the Phillies must not miss this opportunity:

Third-baseman Alec Bohm hits the second of the Phillies’ five homers. Click for video…

It’s not just having voted and gotten all that behind me that makes me more cheerful today.

There’s baseball. Good baseball, breaking the way I want it to go. Almost as good as going to Fenway Park and watching the Red Sox pound the Yankees.

Of course, the better game was Game 1, Friday night. I even had a blasphemous thought, in the last moments of the game, when a single ill-fated swing of the bat still could have given it to the Astros… I thought, “This is a great game, even if the Phillies lose.” And it would have been. Fortunately, they won it, 6-5, after having come back from 5-0.

Then there was Game 2, which doesn’t bear talking about, so let’s move on.

Then we moved to the East Coast, which is where the game is best played (even though they still didn’t move the time up to a more reasonable hour). And there was a delay of a day due to rain.

But Game 3 was worth waiting to see. Sure, it was kind of lacking in suspense, but that was fine. I’d like to see a similar game tonight. Then, we can have a close, suspenseful Game 5, with the Phillies winning the way they did in Game 1, and we can all celebrate, and not have to go back to Houston and be subjected to all that loud orange waving around.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading about the game this morning in The Boston Globe. I think I’ve mentioned how much I like that paper now since I started subscribing while I was up there, partly because their sports department actually seems to still understand that baseball is our national pastime.

The Globe, and other accounts I glanced at, focused on the same thing I did in my only two tweets during the game. First, I was shaking my head in admiration for the Phillies’ starter when I wrote:

0 and 2. 0 and 2. 0 and 2. 0 and 2…. Suárez knows how to pitch a ballgame….

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) November 2, 2022

Then, it occurred to me to follow that up with something on his counterpart:

… and McCullers, it turns out, pitches a very fine Home Run Derby. At least, I’ve enjoyed it…

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) November 2, 2022

Which was also impressive, in its own way. He tied a World Series record allowing those five homers in only 4⅓ innings.

I hope to see the Astros distinguish themselves similarly tonight. But much more than that, I want to see the Phillies win…