A Reasonable Call for Attention

When I was in church yesterday, I was sitting next to one guy who seemed to be there by himself, in front of one couple who was probably in their forties, and had a younger couple in front of me who walked in a couple minutes late. 

It has increasingly become my habit to go to the so-called Last Chance Mass at OLL, simply because that’s when it ends up working out best for me during the weekend, and it’s pretty close by.  The only part of it I don’t like is that I haven’t been able to find a bike rack around to save my life (or my soul).  But yesterday I was psyched, because coming down 2^nd St., I found one sitting just outside the Punch Pizza.  I was able to both be smug about the fact that I found a bike rack close to somewhere else I wanted to patronize, and also take that of someone who maybe wanted to patronize a place I don’t like so much.  Because- it’s not like they’re going to tow a bike for biking in a spot that person isn’t going to.

                Thus I ended up being much more punctual than usual for this Mass, but with the added worry of not being sure if my light is going to be taken off my bike.  It looks enough a part of the thing that I don’t think I should worry, but I would say there’s still about a 1-in-20 chance that someone takes it.  The light is kind of a piece of crap- plus I also just don’t want to keep it on my person the fewer clothes I start to wear as the weather gets warmer.  And this particular Mass is pretty short, while invading the daylight hours at this point, so all the less opportunity for some petty thief.  Nonetheless, it all added to an increased amount of stress throughout Mass, so I suppose I might have been making too big of a deal about what happened at the sign of peace, but it was still just so far out of the spectrum of my experience that I almost could not deal with it.

                The sign of peace came and I turned to give the sole guy next to me a handshake.  Then I turned around and gave each one of the couple behind me a firm sign of peace as well.  But I turned around to do the same to the couple in front of me and……. nothing.  I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t really do anything, except mentally write half of this out in my head.  In retrospect, was there something I could have done?  I’m honestly asking.  Should I have cleared my throat?  Should I have just stuck my hand out so if one of them sees it out of the corner of their eye, something might come of it?  I had a theory, that they were sort of SoP’d out at that point, having just been given huge hugs by the couple in front of them.  That would explain a lot, especially because they may not have known that couple and it was just something that happened.  That might have used up all their love.  And peace.  (They also may have known them, but I may still have reason to be mad at that couple in front.)

                What is it with all this hugging?  I hope they were all like Best Men and Maids of Honor in each others’ wedding or something like that, because what other reason would you have to justify such a possible invasion of their personal bubbles, not to mention taking up enough time for them to be turning around and giving the guy behind them, who isn’t there with anyone, the sign of peace?[i]  Not that I have anything inherently against hugging.  Quite the contrary.  I think hugs are very important.  I just think what they should essentially mean is “I love you”.  And in that vein, if there are people I am out there hugging, it’s because I almost literally see them as my family.  I’ve heard more and more about humans just needing daily contact with each other lately, because it’s unhealthy not to get a certain amount.  Hugs are a good way to do that, I suppose- but so are high-fives, handshakes, chest-bumps, even the occasional hip-bump[ii].  Just allow the rest of us to share in the human contact, when given certain time constraints.

---

[i] To be fair to the couple two rows ahead, the people just ahead of me still had plenty of Sign of Peace interlude to notice me.  I hate to say it, but this whole thing is very typical of this church.

[ii] Which I’m actually pretty sure I invented my junior year of high school with my Hungarian friend Dani.

Do You Know Where Your Team Is Right Now?

I was watching Pujols hit number 500 out in Nationals Park this morning on SportsCenter, and just thinking about how much I disapprove of the Angels now being called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  I do understand the owner’s perspective that he wants to market the team to the bigger city in the metro area, but anyone who actually lives in Los Angeles makes a clear distinction between L.A. and Orange County.  It’s not the same place, so the team name shouldn’t pretend it is.  It really isn’t even pretending- it’s saying “We know they play in one place, but we’re naming it after this other one.”  I was accused the other day about trying to make up the names for how teams name each other, in regards to what right the Brooklyn Nets have to name their team after the borough.  But I’ve come around on that.  Brooklyn is a huge entity, with a huge identity, so they should go for it.  Which brings me to the first rule:

Rule 1:  Thou Shalt Name Thy Team After the Smallest Possible Entity Thou Can Which Most Respects the People of that Area.

                When I was first granted these rules from the Great Sports Commissioner in the Sky, I didn’t understand all the wording.  But I believe this simply means that whatever entity the people of the area most identify with is probably the right one to choose to name the sports team after.  All the teams in Chicago are named after that city because no one cares about the rest of Illinois.  You could sooner name it the NE Illinois/NW Indiana/Southern Wisconsin Whatevers, and it would have the same kind of resonance.  (Except it would be a mouthful.)

                The Rangers play in Arlington, Texas, which is not a very well-known city outside that area, despite having almost as many people as Dallas or Fort Worth.  So for that and reasons of synergy with their nickname, they chose to name them after that state.  Probably for similar reasons, the Minnesota Twins chose their state name, even though there had already been a very successful major sports team in their state named after their biggest city.  Bloomington still had to be associated with the whole state, and as great a name as Twins is, it wouldn’t be possible to call them the [Insert a single city’s name here] Twins.  Nonetheless, I do feel like they are our area’s team most closely named after the Twin Cities,[i] which suits me just fine.

                A couple other questions can be brought up in regards to the GSC’s first rule.  What would he have to say about the Golden State Warriors, who play in Oakland?  First, I would have to argue that no one wants their team named after an s---hole like “Oaktown”, especially if there is no competing team in San Francisco, aka The City[ii].  And while Golden State technically refers to the whole state of California, it specifically highlights the history of Northern California, whither everyone headed during the area’s famed Gold Rush of 1849.

                Then we come to the question of Tampa Bay- the fact that they have two rather large cities surrounding one geographic feature does not necessarily define the area geographically.  It’s said that Tropicana Field in St. Pete is about a 40 minute drive for anyone from Tampa, and considering very few people are from that area and Tampa itself actually hosts a minor league affiliate of the Yankees, this translates to rock-bottom attendance even when the team is good.  This is easier to justify in the football realm, because with only eight home games a year, people from all over can completely justify the trip, and there is very little else competing in that area that time of year.  So considering its giant population, its history as an independent city, and a very recognizable cultural association in the present-day, Brooklyn can have their Nets- and maybs take the Isles when they have the chance.[iii]

                Rule 2:  Thou must at least play in the same Metro Area as thou claimest thy team is from.

                This is a rule that has mostly been rectified, although there are a few cases which at least bear further discussion.  The first and probably most notable is in the Meadowlands of New Jersey, where not one, but TWO teams claim to represent a city in one state over.  I have myself been to new Jersey, and I can tell you that there’s still a strong association with the Big Apple all the way over in Northwestern New Jersey, which the Meadowlands is much closer than.  In fact, most of the entire state of New Jersey is a ‘burb of NYC and they’re content with that.  The original incarnation of the MLS franchise now known as the New York Red Bulls was at least originally called the New York/New Jersey MetroStars.  And they had to point out that the recent Super Bowl in the unfortunately named MetLife Stadium[iv].  In the case of the NJ Devils, they found a great name, a multitude of competition from two other New York hockey teams, and a nickname with which people of the area identify (plus a few more Cup wins than those teams in our lifetimes).

                The sin of FC Dallas of MLS is not so much a sin against their fans, but a symptom of what’s wrong with having a team in that area in the first place.  The team plays in Frisco, a city so far outside Dallas, that no one in the city would try to claim being from Big D.  And if that’s where you are resigned to play as a pro sports team, something needs to be re-addressed about the alignment of teams in your league[v].  It just sucks that the team happens to be doing really well so far this year.

                The former Boston Patriots have acknowledged the distance Foxboro is from the capital of the region in their name, on the west coast, we will soon have an egregious violation of this rule and the geographic sensibilities of all Californians.  The San Francisco 49ers are moving to a stadium just outside San Jose (Frank to Joe?) and about a 75 mile trip to the city they profess to represent.  I have no idea what they could do to redefine themselves (not that they’d want to), but if I was an Oakland Raiders supporter (who are scary enough), I would pull a George H.W. Bush and tell them “This aggression will not stand”!  Nor would I be happy as a resident of San Jose, for our generosity to go so unacknowledged in the team name.  “We’re home of the Earthquakes and Sharks, for crying out loud!”  Naming them something to do with the Bay Area or NoCal would completely contested by Oakland, but they might have to take a more Angelic approach to it.  In Anaheim, they rarely refer to the ‘Los Angeles’ moniker, given the risk of alienation to those actually attending the games, saying simply “Here are your Angels!”  I genuinely feel bad for these teams.

---

[i] See My Thoughts on The TC Logo

[ii] Which I believe the team actually had on their uni’s for a few seasons back in the day.

[iii] Brooklyn Jets also has a nice ring to it, considering those two other teams’ second class status in the city, and the presence of JFK on the edge of the borough.

[iv] How could they not call it JetBlue Stadium? So much going for that name.

[v] City of Lakes FC!

Line 'Em Up!

                Sometimes I play a game with football team names, which itself doesn’t have a name.  It seems to work well with football nicknames, because they are, in all honesty, somewhat derivative of each other.  You’re going for a lot of the same things.  They generally want the name to be scary, and in as much as in any sport, I think fans picture an actual representation of their team fighting one from their opponent.  Thus, I’ve noticed, there are correlations across the conferences of team nicknames.  Here’s how they lined up this time:

Houston and New Orleans:  These are both southern cities, so it makes sense why they should have a similar theme as far as the marketing of their team goes.  And while on the surface this may seem like the correlation between their names isn’t very strong (there aren’t going to be many Texan Saints, let’s just say), where they connect the most is, I believe, in the logos.  Both are versions of somewhat-overused symbols from the places they associate with.  Texas is something like a different country, but Louisiana is one of the more under-ratedly provincial states in the union.

Kansas City and Minnesota:  These places also seem to have a connection with each other, given that they are both western areas on rivers.  But while many might see no connection between a Norse warrior and a stoic Native American, I see it more like this:  Vikings are members of a type of tribe, in a very dog-eat-dog world.  The chiefs could very well be a member of a similar tribe in America, from a time when they might have first been starting to make tools (thus the Arrowhead), and many think the Vikings made it to America anyway.  Plus their logos are very pointy.

Indianapolis and St. Louis:  When you have a couple franchises like this which take long and storied journeys across the United States (and in some cases folding back east, a little bit) you do start to have some similarities in the image of the teams, if not the logos and nicknames themselves.  Both teams have one championship within most of their fanbase’s lifetime, but also play in a market that generally prefers a different sport (baseball for St. Louis, basketball for Indy).  And both teams have rounded logos which are shorthand for hoofed quadrupeds you wouldn’t want to have to fight, but aren’t inherently scary, either.

Seattle and Miami:  In each of these coastal towns with large foreign ethnic identities, football has nonetheless become an important part of the local identity.  Unfortunately for fans of aesthetics, each of these teams has changed their marine-animal logo to one that misunderstands the original’s charm.  Seattle’s ‘Hawk has gotten more angry, though less like one you’d find on one of the area’s famous totem poles.  And Miami didn’t realize that what its logo had going for it was just “It’s a Dolphin wearing a Helmet!”

Pittsburgh and San Francisco: To start, I had always grouped my Packers with Pittsburgh on “Midwestern towns whose teams pay tribute to an historical industry” qualifier.  But I tried something different this time.  The Steelers and 49ers both pay homage to their area’s history, and both of these industries revolve around a metal (useful and valuable, respectively). Each of these teams has also had strong recent runs after dominant runs in the early days of the Super Bowl era.

The Rest:

Philadelphia Eagles à Cincinnati Bengals

Dallas Cowboys à Buffalo Bills

New York Giants à Tennessee Titans

Washington Redskins à New England Patriots

Chicago Bears à Cleveland Browns

Detroit Lions à San Diego Chargers

Green Bay Packers à New York Jets

Carolina Panthers à Jacksonville Jaguars

Tampa Bay Buccaneers à Denver Broncos

Atlanta Falcons à Oakland Raiders

Arizona Cardinals à Baltimore Ravens

Selling the Farm [Teams]

In my fanaticism for the greatest sport in the world, I like to debate strange topics with myself.  These arguments are often a result of the Baseball Book Club I’m a part of.  But usually it’s just things I think of.  Team names, team uniforms, rivalries, schedules.  All of these things come together in one of my all-time greatest searches: which Minor League is the best?

                By Minor Leagues, I mean leagues affiliated with Major League teams.  But I also have a lot of other arbitrary rules for what constitutes a good league.  You like the League to have a certain amount of its own tradition, but also not take itself too seriously.   This can be reflected in the team names, how far away the teams are from each other, and even just what cities the teams are in.  One of the prime candidates for the title of Best League has got to be the Midwestern League.  It has a FANtastic combination of the perfect places for baseball teams, relationships these teams can foster with their big league clubs, and identities they can forge with their own fan bases.

                A perfect example of this can be found in the Cedar Rapids Kernels.  The Minnesota Twins’ low-A farm club down in Iowa, which a couple buddies of mine and I went down for a road trip to see, are in my opinion doing everything right in the aforementioned categories.  The name Kernels identifies well with the area’s farming industry, but is goofy enough for the kids to enjoy.  The logo itself is a baseball bat dressed in a corn husk, wearing a baseball cap- it’s everything you want a minor league logo to be.  But besides that, they’ve just made all the right marketing decisions.  Their field is beautiful, and as developed as any I’ve seen at that level.  And when they realized what they had in new prospect Byron Buxton and went above and beyond their normal plan by actually making sherseys with his name, they also made the right call.

                But all this seems very typical of the franchises in that league.  There are sixteen of them, so they all have to distinguish themselves in their own ways.  Alliteration in a name is a good place to start because it’s fun to say.  The Dayton Dragons and Lansing Lugnuts both fit this description quite well.  And most of these teams are located in reasonably-sized metro areas.  They don’t have the warmest weather, but they’re able to support a baseball team that size, especially if that team has an exciting attraction or an identity the area can be proud of.[i]  Connections to the major leagues probably help, too.  The Wisconsin TimberRattlers are a couple hours from their big league club, the Milwaukee Brewers; same goes for the Peoria Chiefs and theirs, the St. Louis Cardinals; nor are the Western Michigan Whitecaps much further from the Detroit Tigers.  So a lot of these fans have easy access to the teams their favorite players will soon end up on.

                The Carolina League, on the other hand, is in my opinion a very poorly thought-out league, which could learn a few lessons from the Midwestern League.  It’s a class A Advanced league, but it contains only eight teams, without many nearby connections to the big league clubs, relatively speaking.  Only two teams play less than two states away from their big league affiliates, and several are much further than that. But besides that, the names are not so much uninspired, but rather miscalculated.  I think there’s a rule somewhere that you can’t name a team after the league they play in, and yet the Carolina Mudcats are trying to do that.[ii]  I wouldn’t call a team playing in the American League, America!  Other questionable teams’ names include the Potomac Nationals, named not after a city, county or state but a river.  I wonder how many of their fans live on or in said river.  And finally, I originally thought the Wilmington Blue Rocks were out of North Carolina, as there is a major city of the same name located there, a place the league names itself after.  But nay!-they represent the city in Delaware.  If you’re keeping score at home, that makes three out of the eight teams representing one of the two titular states.  Classic Carolina League!  Also, these eight teams are spread over five states ranging from Myrtle Beach in the Deep South, to Wilmington, well into the Mid-Atlantic region.

                The bigger reason the Carolina League has to be a poor idea for the type of sport it’s trying to promote has to do with what they’re competing against.  While I haven’t compared the types of attendance they have to the other events to which I’m about to refer, it stands to reason, given the scale of these respective events.  There is a limit to the amount of sports an area can handle, and I surmise that the Carolina League is topping the area out of it.  Auto racing is a much bigger deal in this area than it is elsewhere.  And despite the small concentration of teams in this particular area, nowhere in America is ever going to escape the influence of the NFL.  This is all without mentioning what the area might be the most well known for:  college basketball.[iii]  North Carolina has enough die-hard fans for the rest of the area, but the ACC has a strong grip now on the whole eastern seaboard.  The North Carolina-Duke rivalry is one of the country’s best in any sport, and Georgetown, not even an ACC member, is one of the most storied programs in the region.  Therefore, my fixes: rename the Carolina team Raleigh, rename the Potomac team to one of the cities or counties around there, and rename the league The Piedmont League.

               

---

[i] Just one of these teams, the Great Lakes Loons, sins in a way to which I will refer later, not picking a city, county or state in their name.

[ii] And they play in Five County Stadium.  Way to assert a specific identity…

[iii] My apologies to NASCAR and college football, both with valid complaints.

Because I Know You Guys Care...

[The following was started in mid-September of last year, and completed about mid-November.  It's an insight into just how insanely into fantasy baseball I became this year, and how much I've come to accept that.] 

               I’m pretty satisfied with my fantasy baseball team right now.  Having been eliminated from the playoffs in Mike Anderson’s league, I’m of course referring to the team I have in Marshall Isotopes, Obsessed.  It has so far been a pretty good season, with a pretty hot start, hovering around fourth place for the first couple months, but then dropping into the middle to lower part of the pack in the middle of the season.  What spurred the slump was part not being able to find a solid 5^th, 6^th or 7^th starting pitcher, but also ignoring my needs on the offensive side of my line-up.  It didn’t help that Gomez and Harper kept running into walls in center and then going on the DL.  But my not being vigilant in the OF pickups also allowed teams nipping at my heals to acquire the latest hot studs and use them to pass me.\

                But it started to turn around about late July.  Harper was coming back, I had just gotten Aaron Hill back and producing and I picked up the oft-ignored Dillon Gee.  None of my team is assembled in a vacuum, and I of course remembered how well Gee had produced for a stretch for me the year before, before he was benched for the season after an aneurysm (?!).  But unfortunately with Brandon Beachy finally returning and a couple rookies producing, my favorite young pickup from last year, Kris Medlen, was about to be scratched from the Braves rotation.  He wasn’t happy about it and it was probably affecting his performance.  But then Tim Hudson (who hadn’t been pitching outstanding, but had sort of earned his spot) was smoked on the shin by a line drive and was all of a sudden done for the year.  Medlen’s rotation spot now more secure, he caught fire a little bit, and I like to think sparked the rest of my team (because that’s how that works).

                Gee settled into a groove, despite not-outstanding stuff and a terrible team, and he and the suddenly Red-hot Mat Latos carried my team through a couple rough starts from Wainwright and Cliff Lee.  And the offense started to do their part.  As many times as I had threatened to cut Elvis Andrus, he refused to go quietly, remembering he’s fast and just stealing every time on.  Bryce Harper’s done everything he can to salvage his fantasy season, and has done a pretty good job of it, despite the Nationals’ overall disappointing year.  Of course, Andrew McCutchen has been my most consistent play all year, insisting on making the NL MVP his, while his Pirates continue to surprise everybody.

                There was a note on McCutchen’s profile the other day, which was one of my favorite of the season.  “Manager Clint Hurdle is electing to sit McCutchen today vs. the Reds…  This is a very questionable move, considering he’s clearly their best player, the Pirates are in the midst of a pennant race and they just had a day off on Thursday [this being the next Wednesday].”  Not sure if Yahoo itself was trying to cover its own ass or just defend playing McCutchen, but it always makes me grin when a fantasy analysis criticizes an on-field decision and also happens to be right.  The fact of the matter is, that while many criticize fantasy sports in general for only worrying about individual players, sometimes what’s best for a player’s fantasy value is what’s best for team value.  The happy ending is that McCutchen was the NL MVP, completely worth his value, and anchored an outfield that when healthy, was as good as anyone’s.

                And yet probably my most deft move of the season took place on the pitching side.  Ubaldo Jiminez had been a fantasy enigma for a couple seasons, but after coming back from injury and putting together a couple good outings, his numbers became too much to ignore.  It probably helped that I was able to watch him in person (or on TV, can’t remember which) early in his run, and so was pretty confident that this was for real.  Nonetheless, given how competitive this league is and how valuable good starting pitching was, it was surprising that I was able to get him when I didn’t.  Perhaps someone had over-reacted to a couple good outings, and a couple others looked and trusted their preconceived notions of him from years past.  But he was able to put together a great second half, which when coupled with my already-strong top of the rotation, was nothing short of unstoppable.

                At a certain point, though, I didn’t know if it was gonna work out the way it did.  I had been jockeying with one other guy from 4^th to 5^th and back well into May.  June hit and the team seemed to slip further.  I could not find a solid 3^rd starter even, to compliment Lee and Wainwright.  My third base was super weak and Gomez and Harper kept running into walls.  Literally- they were back and forth from the DL for a couple months.  Somewhere along the course of getting a couple of my probably-league leading Over-Negative-Fifty pointers from my starters, I tweeted out “I hate fantasy baseball”.  The effect it had on my team couldn’t have been more positive.  I ran off a string of more over 250 days than probably anyone else in the league during that span, most of those days going for over 300.  It ended up being too much for the 3 or for other teams I was hanging back with.  I was soon in third behind the Malherek having the fantasy year of his life, Terry.  But Terry seemed to lose focus, as it was probably easy to do with football season starting and Ellis still sitting so far ahead.

                I never thought it was conceivable to catch Ellis.  It was my goal to reach and maintain second place, which I was able to do.  Because I had not made so many moves throughout the season, I had an advantage on many of the guys who were chasing me.  But Ellis had an even bigger advantage.  He only had used half his moves or so well into September, and so streamed a bunch of pitchers down the stretch, burying the rest of us.  My lead over Kyle was still not secure until I got decent performances from Estrada (rejoining my team from when I dropped him a month in) and Ubaldo the last day of the season didn’t hurt.  And another value pick for me, Greg Holland, really carried his weight down the stretch.  It was such a psychological advantage that your great points day could be helped by another 40 pointer from the KC closer, or that a bad pitching or hitting day could be salvaged by such a bonus.  He got 33 on September 29^th which more than shut the door on Kyle.

                The whole season I had been viewing my respective two teams as based around certain divisions in baseball.  My team in my Sporty Friends’ league, Shades of ‘24[i], was more or less based around the AL West.  Kinsler, King Felix, and the the Flying Salmon (Iwakuma) were staples of a team that wound up mounting a 3^rd place season.[ii]  Obsessed was based even more around the NL Central.  So when I needed another bat down the stretch to replace the hurt Desmond Jennings, I turned to the division again, taking Matt Adams, who had now taken over for Allen Craig.  It was a double advantage because Terry had Allen Craig, who wouldn’t play the rest of the year, and he’d been a big reason the team was in that position.  Between that and Jose Fernandez reaching his innings limit, Terry was doomed down the stretch.

               

---

[i] A reference to the Washington Senators, the Twins’ predecessors, of the year they won their only World Championship.

[ii] In the Poo Holes’ Dynesty [sic] League

A Home Team Assessment

                The Twins’ TC hat is one of the most unique pieces of apparel in sports.  They’re probably the only franchise to essentially have a logo on any part of their uniform that doesn’t stand for either the place they’re named after or the nickname of the team.  The Hornets got creative recently and started writing out NOLA on their jerseys, so as to remind people that New Orleans was in LA [Louisiana], but that’s not quite the same thing.  You could make the argument that they have put the T there for Twins and the C is just an afterthought- meant to stand for Cities, if you’re in the mood.  The Twin Cities, as what the hat represents, are able to be both the place the team plays and the inspiration for their nickname.

                Nicknames for teams probably started with English soccer teams being given these (still) unofficial designations by their supporters, usually based on the kit colors (Reds, Blues, Magpies, etc).  But in America we decided it was important that all teams have more formal team names, specifically when cities like Boston or New York would have multiple teams.  And while those teams have in their histories changed nicknames a fair bit, our franchise has been called the Twins since moving from DC.  While the name change has led to the two incarnations never connecting their shared history (see Senators’ Banners at Target Field, Lack of), the Twins have recently decided to honor the earliest eras of baseball in this country by including Baseball Club in their most recent logo.

                The logo itself may only use the Baseball Club as an excuse, however, for the key addition to the logo that most adds to the Twins’ identity.  As long as I’ve been a fan of the team, they’ve worn Navy blue and Red[i].  But I don’t think they’ve ever been the Navy and Red, the way other teams identify themselves with their colors.  One of the problems is that neither is really the primary color, but more on that later.  The other problem is that there’s a couple other ways to identify the team, whether it’s that they have TC on their hat (using the time-honored “wishbone C”) or the fact we have pinstripes on our home unis.   But both of these ideas are semi-borrowed from other teams, so they’ve each failed to grab a foothold.  They realized that the closest thing the team has to an identifier is the Navy and Red.  By adding the navy outer ring to what is still essentially the classic Twins full logo, the organization is at least able to garner some attention to its color scheme.

                Another way that the Twins have made people associate the team with the colors is by the pennant flags out in left field.[ii]  The pennants themselves offer fans another glimpse of their color scheme- emphasizing their World Series wins with Red, the bolder of their two colors.  And by making the flags as understated as they are, they make the somewhat modest success of the franchise actually seem grander.  “We can’t afford to take up room in the stadium with unnecessarily large flags- we just have too many championships.  And we count on getting even more.”

                But they still made a bad call taking those trees out from behind the centerfield fence.

---

[i] Because there are so many named shades of red, no team ever calls their color just “Red”.  It’s generally called either Cardinal or Crimson or Burgundy or something else.  Ironically, as many distinct colors of blue as there are, teams generally call their shade of blue just “Blue” regardless of how specific that is.  All this is to say that I really don’t know what the Twins refer to their scheme as.

[ii] My friends and I have joked that while the Twins don’t seem to have any extra room for more pennants out there, it’s not something they’ll have to worry about for a while.

Another Irrelevant Question

Why did the Boston Red Sox fail to win the 1986 World Series?  Did the fact that their franchise had not won a World Series for 68 years in any way contribute to their failure to close the deal?  They were one strike away, though I don’t consider that much more significant than just being one out.  All it takes is hitting the ball in play, and that’s a strike, too, just a more productive one.  Whether or not you believe in the Curse of the Bambino, there just seems to have been (and continues to be)[i] a collective cloud hanging over it.  Maybe it’s the Boston media or pressure from the fans themselves, but it was this moment that above all others brought attention to the Red Sox’ plight.

There are a number of things that set the Red Sox far enough back after 1918[ii] that they didn’t even gotten many subsequent chances to take on the best team in the National League.  The expansion of the major leagues actually didn’t help, I would have to guess, because the big league talent reached an equilibrium of competitiveness with that number of teams they added through the 60s.  That was in part because they added a whole new demographic to the talent pool by breaking the color barrier.  And with the Sox being one of the last teams to add black players, it’s not surprising they were behind in their capitalization on that market.

                When they found resurgence in ’67, they were already battling about 20 straight years of second-division finishes and had to win one of the most exciting pennant races in history to boot.  So winning the World Series would have been icing on the cake, but was probably beside the point.  In truth, they didn’t even have as bad a time of it as the Indians, who were finishing in second in the AL for most of these years[iii] and finally made it back to the World Series in ’95. The Red Sox also made it back to the Fall Classic in 1975, but they were doomed to lose to one of the most unstoppable teams of all time, the Big Red Machine.  By ’86 their fan base was starting to get impatient.

                Another part of the Red Sox history, though, is undoubtedly engrained in their stadium.  They were bound to win or lose with that place, but it was going to contribute to their ultimate destiny one way or another.  The doubles-friendly layout was a factor in Enos Slaughter’s Mad Dash, and then Bucky Fucking Dent drilled his heart-breaking homer over the Monster.  I honestly think the Sox coulda won the Series in ’86 if they had ended it at Fenway. As many times as it had hurt them when they most needed it, they were due for some help from the park.  To come that close to a championship, it made me think that they were actually a better team than the Mets, but it could not have helped their chances to have to finish them off in the city of their most hated rival.

                The most ignored part of the whole episode is how clutch the Mets themselves were.  A large part of winning the whole battle is opening the psychological floodgates by doing just a few things your opponent would not have expected.  Even scoring one run with the bases empty and the Red Sox that close to ending the season was 90% of the battle.   I don’t know if it was Calvin Schiraldi just trying to make the Mets get themselves out, but simply the fact that they were able to do what the Sox own Ted Williams described as the hardest feat in sports, hitting a baseball- for a clean base hit, three times in a row when they had to, gives them the majority of the credit for the win in my book.  Bad things like wild pitches and booted balls are going to happen a certain percentage of the time, but the Mets had put themselves in a position to win well before all that.

                They had the entire population (and the 68 years’ torment) of Red Sox Nation pulling for them from several hours away.  But in the end, the collective will of a fan base that had only existed for 26 years[iv]- and was present with their team at that time- was able to win the day.

---

[i] See 2011 Season, End Of

[ii] Besides selling still the greatest (yeah, I said it) baseball player of all time to an as-of-then unsuccessful ballclub from the Bronx, NY.

[iii] …had a rare ten-year run of incompetence around the time the first Major League movies were being made

[iv] Albeit a fan base cobbled together from the remnants of two previously tortured ones, the Dodgers and Giants- both perennial WS losers to the Yankees, and at least one would go on to achieve much greater success in their new home.