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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Tuesday, October 26, 2021Houston vs. Atlanta Is Rob Manfred’s Nightmare World Series
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: October 26, 2021 at 10:28 AM | 33 comment(s)
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1. ERROR---Jolly Old St. NickAs a Yankees fan, I'm not sure why being the most hated franchise in professional sports is necessarily a bad thing. From what I've seen, it's just given the Astros more incentive to stick it to road fans like they did in Chicago and Boston.
Of all the possibilities at the beginning of the playoffs I would have said Milwaukee vs Tampa Bay would have been the worst matchup ratings wise.
Update: Coke to Jose.
The Yankees are hated because they've been too good for too long; with the exception of the all-too-brief periods in the late 60s and the early 90s, the Yankees have been contenders pretty much every year since Babe Ruth came to town a friggin' century ago. Meanwhile, the Astros were mostly irrelevant (except 2005) for much of their half-century history before (allegedly) cheating to win in 2017. Not the same thing.
EDIT: Milwaukee vs Tampa Bay would have been the worst matchup ratings wise.
That was the match-up I was rooting for, as (a) neither team had ever won a WS (the Padres, Rangers, Rox and M's being the others) and (b) the sight of FOX execs hurling themselves out of windows. (Or just hurling.)
As the Astros return to the World Series, is it time for baseball to forgive and forget? Nah.
The fact that the Astros hit much better on the road than at home in the years in question (2017 and 2018) doesn't seem to have entered the writer's consciousness, as well as the fact that in the 2019 World Series they lost all of their home games while winning all of their road games.
But the real beauty is his guilt-by-association, wherein nearly every player on the Astros roster is somehow tainted because they were signed or developed during the years that Jeff Luhnow was their GM. He goes on for paragraph after paragraph about this:
The Yankees are hated because they've been too good for too long; with the exception of the all-too-brief periods in the late 60s and the early 90s, the Yankees have been contenders pretty much every year since Babe Ruth came to town a friggin' century ago. Meanwhile, the Astros were mostly irrelevant (except 2005) for much of their half-century history before (allegedly) cheating to win in 2017. Not the same thing.
If you'll re-read what I wrote, I never said that the reasons the two teams are hated were equivalent. My only point is how that hatred works as an incentive for the teams that are hated.
"We were cheating but it didn't work quite as ideally as models might predict" is not really much of a defense :)
2017 Astros home-road splits
2018 Astros home-road splits
Although if the Astros win, at least I get to be happy for Dusty.
But, just as with PEDs, a defense that is summed up entirely as "well so were they" isn't much of a defense. Just as no one cares if a 18HR second baseman was using steroids, no one cares that a 75 win team might have been stealing signs.
On the other hand, I'm all for whatever gets Manfred booed as loudly and often as possible.
Truth.
Banging on a trash can was so easy for the opposition to detect and counter, and you know word got around to other teams quickly, so it's no surprise it didn't help the offense much, if at all. However, everyone gets to be all self righteous and have a bad guy. Pretty much works out for everyone except Houston, but they don't seem to be too bothered by the reaction, anyway.
Now losing your manager, general manager, and several valuable draft picks, on the other hand, that does hurt, but the Astros just keep going as best they can.
Again, I think the punishment is probably pretty appropriate but only if we accept most teams were doing something similar. If it really was only the Astros, it's light.
And, anyway, they've done fine since being outed. There is no question they're a great team. They really are sort of Bonds-like. No one can deny the innate greatness, but they cheated nonetheless.
It's a little too early for a professed Orioles fan to dress up for Halloween.
Similar to how a lot of Yankees players were singled out in the Mitchell Report, the punishment was focused on the people connected to the source. Selig had Radomski; Manfred had Fiers.
so Braves in 7, then.
Yes; although there are grey areas where something is either not against the rules (steroids pre-testing), or just sitting there begging to be exploited (the ubiquity of video showing the catchers' signs) – and people take advantage of that, but they are not proud of it and would rather their actions not be publicized.
I don't know exactly what to think of that in either case. Probably both are examples of some concept of sportsmanship that goes beyond the strict limit of the rules and what one can get away with.
In the most general terms, cheating or unsportsmanlike behavior in order to win is to my mind a venial sin – fine somebody, suspend them a while, clarify and enforce the rules going forward, and the offender should come back with a clean slate. Whereas gambling on games remains unforgivable because it is inextricable from throwing or fixing games, which IMO is far worse than trying to press an advantage.
Generally speaking, fans of a sport do not hate teams that don't win all the time. People didn't hate the Patriots because they thought Brady/Belichick were arrogant, or because they thought the the team cheated...ultimately, they hated New England because for 19 years, they went to the Super Bowl nearly 50% of the time, and won it about a third of the time. If the Patriots struggle for a few more years like they have the last 1 1/2 years, the hatred for the Patriots will soon go away, and they'll be just like everybody else again.
Same thing with Houston - for American League teams, the Astros are arguably the number one barrier that stops other teams from getting to the World Series. For 40+ years, it was the Yankees - which is why the Yankees were hated by so many other teams' fans.
and they hate the Yankees in significant part because of their pampered, whiny fan base.
and they hate the Astros because not only did their players get off 100 percent scot-free, they still had the stones be whiny about it anyway.
more than just "winning" is involved.
that didn't help.
that the toxin-tongued reptilian Jerry Jones bought the team - and here we are.
they have their best team this year in like forever, though
Yep, Dallas has had...let's see now...one straight losing season, from 2020 to 2020. (The Cowboys haven't had consecutive losing seasons since 2001-03.) They won the NFC East...three years ago, in 2018. They went 13-3 just five years ago, in 2016!
Yeah. Forever.
As somebody whose team was knocked out by Houston in 2017 and 2019, I second the emotion.
------------------
People hate the Patriots in significant part because Belichick is a dick.
and they hate the Yankees in significant part because of their pampered, whiny fan base.
That "significant" is carrying a lot of weight there. If the Patriots and Yankees had played like the Jets and the Mets over the years, people would condescendingly mock and pity them, not hate them. As a Jets and Mets fan you above all should know that.
Bingo.
Not many people hate the Pirates.
Atlanta Heads Home, Hoping to Find Strength in Defiance
And here's the cherry on the cake:
Maybe Trump can lead them in a tomahawk chop. I can hardly wait to see if Fox cuts away from the action for an in-game interview with him.
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