World Series

The World Series wrapped up yesterday with the Chicago Cubs winning for the first time in 108 years, and finally breaking the Billy Goat Curse.  By all accounts, it was a series for the ages – 2 franchises steeped in history, 2 franchises who hadn’t won the World Series for a long time (Cleveland Indians last won in 1948), a 7 game series (it is best of 7) that went back and forth wildly between 2 closely matched teams, the 7^th game going to extra innings, an opportune rain break just before extra innings that might have completely changed the momentum, heroics with the bat and ball by a bunch of journeymen.  Unfortunately, one big issue with all this – it’s baseball.  And baseball sucks.  So I hardly watched any of the World Series, and although I don’t mind that Chicago finally broke its long drought (and I bet a certain Steve Bartman is very relieved by that – look it up knuckleheads) I really don’t care that much.  Of the big 4 sports in the US, I have really gone off baseball (my ranking is probably NFL > NBA > NHL > MLB) – I certainly don’t bother watching it on TV, where it is just too slow.  At least you can easily go watch the Seattle Mariners play if you want to, much easier to get tickets for a baseball game than for the Seattle Seahawks.  But I haven’t been to see a game live for a long time, and not many times at all in Seattle - actually I think the last stadium I’ve been to see a game was Fenway Park in Boston and that was several years ago.  Perhaps if my team the San Diego Padres suddenly and unlikely became a good team again (they haven’t made the playoffs for years), then my interest might be drawn back into the game again – but as it is, I don’t like it for so many reasons: I don’t like the biased and weighted coverage of the older franchises at the expense of the newer franchises, I don’t like the repetition, slowness and minimal amount of actual action in the game, and I don’t like the way the drug scandals in baseball have kind of been swept under the rug and none of the cheats properly outed and punished.  American sports writers can try to romanticize baseball as much as they want, but it’s no surprise to me that the passion for “America’s national pastime” is waning.