The Los Angeles Dodgers are the 2020 Major League Baseball World Series Champions. Congratulations were in order two weeks ago but I’m just getting around to it because the New York Yankees were eliminated in the ALDS which means, for me, my deep emotional investment in the season is largely over. In the last two years, even, once the Yankees are out of it baseball becomes almost solely Work Chore, as I don’t even really gamble on it often. In 2020, I was grateful to have baseball at all, so I soaked up the post-season entirely, and I’ve always found it uncouth to do a season autopsy or begin fretting about free agency until the World Series is properly over and offseason news begins to trickle in.
I did not want baseball, or any sport really, in 2020. It made sense to me for the NBA and NHL to bubble up and finish out their postseasons, soccer without fans is extremely weird, football has proven to have pretty bad transmission rates, but baseball seemed to present unique challenges and I wasn’t sure it was worth the risk. Predominantly, I have believed that a lot of Rona’s worst carnage could’ve been avoided if people were paid to stay home, really stay home, for like two or three months, and that revving up a live entertainment machine would ultimately undermine the half-measures being undertaken in May and June no matter what kind of mitigation effort was undertaken.
Then, Rob Manfred, a man I revile like one would hold a particularly rancid bile for a war criminal, squanders weeks of potential playing time quibbling with the Player’s Union in a deliberate move meant to exhaust negotiators and float trial balloons ahead of 2021’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Coming hot off the heels of completely mismanaging the investigative and disciplinary process of the Houston Trash Can scandal, Rob digs his heels to further fuck up my favorite sport by announcing a “temporary” expanded playoffs format for 2020’s abbreviated season, a three-batter minimum for pitchers, and throws a runner on second at the start of extra innings. A lot of these changes are obvious steps in the pursuit of Manfred’s White Whale: speeding the pace of baseball games to attract new fans, and is largely done to the detriment of longtime fans’ enjoyment. I hate them and so should you. They make the pool of strategies a shallower place, and baseball is already too focused on trying to sail the ball over your head every third or fourth at-bat hoping every game hits the over in an effort to retain more casual viewers.
Part of not wanting a season was selfish, too. I sauntered into 2020 baseball fired up. I was ready! A new pinstripe jersey, a frothing hatred of Houston that rivaled my lifelong animosity towards essentially the entire city of Boston, and a thirst for revenge with what looked to be the fabled but frequently faulty New York Yankees as a “FULLY OPERATIONAL DEATH STAR.” Severino goes down for the year, Judge is battling some kind of rib/core injury, and before Spring Training could even really get going, everything was suspended. “Maybe by the time they work out how to have a season safely, some of our guys will have healed up!” I thought.
Continue reading →