After much ado (or relatively little), we’ve reached October, the best time of the year to be a baseball fan. Ten teams will vie for the right to play in the World Series. It’s a month long extravaganza featuring the best of the best.
But first…
A one game playoff where the winner moves on to play the division winner with the best record in their respective league, and the loser goes home.
We’ve come to this – the final weekend of the season. Already, the Cubs have shuttered Wrigley Field across the street, going out with a win against their hated rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals. Three to four games a piece remain for every team, with a third of those teams locked into positioning battles for the postseason. There’s been a few interesting developments, but as far as the actual participants, our picture is pretty much set. I tossed around several ideas for the lead for this column, things like awards, retirees, winners and losers of the season, but all of my ideas are probably better suited for October columns. So, without further ado…
We’re near the end-game. Two more September updates, and then it’s time for playoffs, aka: that time when everyone else on staff hates me because the Recorder will be swarmed with baseball articles. Tuesday night, the first two division berths were secured by Beltway powerhouses Washington and Baltimore (let that sink in for a moment), both of whom easily clinched their divisions with leads of 12.5 and 13.5 games (as of Wednesday). In addition, the Angels are assured of a berth of some kind – barring a monumental collapse of infinitely small odds, they’ll clinch their division sometime this week. (Before Wednesday’s games, they had a magic number of 2 to clinch the division – one A’s loss and an Angels win would grant them the title, in other words. Again, we’re talking an unprecedented collapse for them not to win the division.)
(Thursday update – Sure enough, last night, the Angels clinched the division by winning 5-0 against Seattle as Oakland dropped a game against Texas 6-1. Rather than edit everything, I’m simply noting that I submitted my copy for deadline before Wednesday’s slate of games. You’re on your own.) [Read more…]
Writing a weekly column is fun! Writing a weekly baseball column about the state of the postseason in the middle of a busy week with work, class, and other assorted pastimes is challenging. This results in last minute updates of respective standings, one which I promise to you I will fulfill. I just want everyone to know exactly what’s up.
These guys are probably having a way better time than you.
We’re leading with dueling song titles, because the state of the league has entered into something approaching wonderful flux. The big money teams are down (with two rather notable exceptions in SoCal), the little, scrappy teams are up, and some old stand-bys are plugging along, doing what they do year in and year out with remarkable consistency. On the one hand, if the season ended today, the Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, and Phillies would all be out of the postseason. This shift away from the East Coast powerhouses of the last decade has been transplanted by the rise of the West Coast, with both LA teams, the Giants, and Oakland representing sunny Cal in the playoffs. [Read more…]
The calendar has turned. The evenings are starting to become a bit cooler, leaves are clinging to the last vestiges of green, and school is back in session. It’s also the last breath of the regular baseball season before jumping into the October playoff frenzy. There are multiple reasons as to why we’re entering my favorite time of the year, and the fact that the World Series is right around the corner plays no small part in this feeling.
A lot has happened in baseball of late: Mo’ne Davis proving there’s no crying in baseball … except for the kids she strikes out; Jackie Robinson West advancing to the tops of the Little League World Series; and continuing struggles in the race for October. Starting September, I’ll update every week regarding the playoff race. For now, the new TV station FXX is marathoning every episode of The Simpsons, and the baseball/softball tribute/parody “Homer at the Bat” grabbed my attention, if only for the sterling line-up of major league guest stars. The episode aired twenty-two years ago, either two too many or three too few for a proper anniversary tribute, but I wanted to check in on what the Springfield Power Plant softball team stars have been up to.
Growing up in the 1990’s was a time to enjoy supreme power in baseball – it was the reign of sluggers like Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Thomas, McGriff, Bagwell, Vaughn (two of them), and dozens of others. Yet, at the same time, the pitching was filthier than ever – pitchers such as Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Johnson, and Martinez either came of age or thrived as never before. Their success lasted into the 2000’s, but while we were treated to a new crop of sluggers (Pujols, Konerko, Giambi, Ortiz, etc.), the pitching of the era never really developed the kinds of aces we saw in the 90’s.
I was working out at the gym today, thinking about Billy Beane’s “brass balls of steel” (exact origin of quote unknown, but it was somewhere on the Internet) and the Jon Lester/Yoenis Cespedes trade, when all of a sudden the White Sox-Tigers game I was watching took an abrupt turn for the surreal. The camera jumped several times between two men: Austin Jackson, the Tigers’ leadoff hitter/center fielder, standing out in the field looking relatively surly; and Dave Dombrowski, the Tigers’ GM, lurking in the back of the dugout like Tywin Lannister behind the Iron Throne. After a few moments and several horrific Hawk Harrelson quips that need not be repeated here, Jackson jogged in, awkwardly hugging every Tiger in his path before being shepherded up the clubhouse ramp by Dombrowski Lannister.
Jackson now plays for the Seattle Mariners. Enter David Price, former Tampa Bay Ray and newly-minted staff ace of the Detroit Tigers.
Cox, LaRussa, Glavine, Thomas, Maddux, and Torre. AKA A Summary of Baseball in the 1990’s.
It’s a relatively safe assumption that nobody else on our tiny staff cares about the Baseball Hall of Fame as much as I do. It’s a much broader leap, but still a reasonable hypothesis, that I care about it more than most of our (hopefully somewhat more than) tiny readership. Therefore, when news governing the actual Hall of Fame rears its head, I stand at attention, ready to pounce upon their latest justice/injustice rendered upon innocent/guilty players.
This time around, it’s a little more complicated than that.
News broke over the weekend that the Baseball Hall of Fame, that venerable and most hallowed of institutions, would be changing a few things in time for this year’s election cycle. One change will be that baseball writers will be prohibited from selling their vote and must sign a waiver of sorts agreeing to a “code of conduct”, a reaction to some of the fuss that sprang up during voting last year. While one might argue over precisely how impactful this measure will be, there’s certainly no harm in it; the Hall simply wants to make sure that there are no further embarrassments to its “hallowed process”.
The All-Star Game grooved right on by, and now the American League will receive home field advantage in this year’s World Series. That’s about as far on the record as I’m willing to go with regards to second-half certainties in Major League Baseball. Everything else remains in flux, from division winners to potential trade candidates, from award winners to statistical oddities. Anybody who says they can see something coming from a mile away is, more often than not, lying – insider information only gets you so far. With that being said, here’s 10 fun predictions for the second half of the 2014 MLB season.