2023 World Series: Arizona Diamondbacks vs Texas Rangers

Posted earlier today:

https://www.mlb.com/news/greatest-world-series-game-1s

How in the hell can you root for a division foe, that doesn't register for me H.P.

― Bee OK, Saturday, 28 October 2023 1:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dodgers have been the team to beat in the division the whole time I’ve followed them (a happy coincidence, I just decided to follow baseball one day and I have family in LA so it was the obvious choice, didn’t know they were running hot when I picked them), so don’t feel as a fan there’s anything to prove/offended by another team in the division doing well. If it was the giants or padres I’d feel different, I’m just neutral to the Rockies and Arizona because they’ve been so unthreatening for so long. Giants different for obvious historical reasons, padres for recent bush-league behaviour.

Also, I’m an international fan, so the regional rivalry thing doesn’t cross the pacific with the same strength. I’d imagine I would feel different if I was a local fan.

The dbacks beating the Yanks in 2001 is so classic to me as well so I’ve got a soft spot for playoff dbacks. Opposite for the Rangers whose post season misery I find kind of amusing (the Freeze and Bautista innings are just some of the best things ever; I watch that Bautista inning all the time). It sounds cruel to say, and I will celebrate heartily for the Rangers if they take this (sincerely)! But up to that point… sports are made great through suffering teams (as long as they aren’t yours lol)

I am watching this merely as a baseball fan though and all I’m hoping for is 7 games and don’t mind who wins. I’m not cheering for the diamondbacks, just entertained by them and want to continue to be, same goes for the Rangers. What a game what a sport ❤️

^^ cosign on all of this

"how could you root for a division rival" would be an insane question for my boomer father and presumably a lot of fans from the league loyalty era. core memory for me: my dad grew up a phillies fan but adopted the orioles after moving to maryland. during the 2008 world series, i ask him if he's excited about the phillies. he says "i'm rooting for the rays. i'm an o's fan, i root for the american league." blew my mind to hear that. i still don't really understand being that loyal to a league but having no qualms switching favorite teams. still a little jealous of it though.

i’m kinda like that. when i was growing up the national league were mysterious unknowns, the Other, which made them implacable enemies once the WS came around. the guys who had just beat you in the playoffs or the regular season, at least you knew who they were, and you had to tip your cap (unless they were the yankees obv)

Yes, we might catch the Cubs or Dodgers on the nationally televised Game of the Week, but otherwise the NL might as well have been from a different country.

Beginning in the mid-90's, interleague play together with my own team not making the playoffs for over twenty years made for some illogical rooting interests.

I didn't really have a league from '70 to '76--a favourite team hundreds of miles away, but not a league--and I don't remember ever feeling any special allegiance to the American League once the Jays came into being. Maybe I've forgotten.

As they said many times last night, the Freese game was exactly 12 years ago. If you believe in the team-of-destiny narrative, that probably felt significant. But I don't think I'd want to grab onto that in this year or facing a seemingly equally perfect team-of-destiny candidate.

The pitch that Garcia hit: dead center, bottom of the zone.

https://i.postimg.cc/QM1SvnpX/adolis.jpg

i grew up a phillies fan and definitely stanned the NL. that's who i rooted for in the all-star games obviously. the AL felt like a whole another world. why would you follow them? you never played them except in the all star game and the WS. although apparently my favorite player at age 8 was cal ripken. most importantly, the AL had the DH. the NL was a league of tradition, the AL were upstarts. AL fans will never know the feeling of having your pitcher coming through with a clutch hit!

houston being in the AL feels weird to me, as does texas having two AL teams but no NL teams. i feel like a city/state/metropolitan area (or country - hi canada!) needs that basic level of parity first = one AL team and one NL team - then you can do what you please (california, chicago/milwaukee).

i've adopted the mets because i live in flushing now, shea is so close, and in honor of morbs. luckily there hasn't been a mets/phillies post-season series of consequence afaict. although somebody goes to great lengths to maintain the wikipedia page on the rivalry. i wouldn't call the rivalry "among the most fiercely contested in the NL" though. that's the phils/braves, for which there isn't even a wikipedia page!

Watching game 2 with my new oriole supporting baseball friend convert and another friend who doesn’t know a thing about baseball tomorrow. Really hoping the newbie enjoys it (and we get another cracker game)

i should amend that and say a pitcher coming through with a clutch bunt, not hit (although that's sweet too). if i ever opened a bar i'd probably call it the bunting pitcher.

My passing familiarity with Phillies Twitter tells me they are still very much invested in the rivalry. There was a video of some of the players in the Phillies locker room doing a little chant that ended in “and ALWAYS, fuck the Mets!”

pic.twitter.com/uuybDfFzcz

— Alex Coffey (@byalexcoffey) October 13, 2023

Mets season is over, roll credits pic.twitter.com/aKiOyYMBaH

— Roll Credits Muse (@Phillies_Muse) October 10, 2022

i should amend that and say a pitcher coming through with a clutch bunt, not hit (although that's sweet too). if i ever opened a bar i'd probably call it the bunting pitcher.

Implementing the universal DH stands alongside the Manfred runner as equal crimes against the sport. Let. Pitchers. Hit!

houston being in the AL feels weird to me

i don't remember really thinking or paying attention to the mets in the 90s. the braves and the marlins were the teams to beat. admittedly i dipped out of baseball for 20 years thereafter and have only come back this year. what i'd miss?

yeah i know it's "citifield" but it's always shea in my head. there's still a gas station in the area called shea fuel (with a ripped off sheraton hotel logo).

You and Chipper Jones.

So fond of Shea Stadium where the fans heckle him, the Atlanta star named his new son after the New York Mets' ballpark Monday -- Shea Logan Jones. "I love playing there," Jones said. "Check the numbers."

Jones has hit 17 home runs at Shea, his highest total at a visiting park, and his first major league homer came there on May 9, 1995. He is a lifetime at .314 hitter at Shea.

that’s awesome. chipper, justice, mcgriff - what a lineup

yeah that was some boys of summer shit right there

too bad chipper is a sandy hook denier

I've definitely had a love/hate relationship with the division the Jays play in, both bemoaning how tough it is most years and taking...pride sounds like an overstatement, but something like that (mixed with arrogance). I did question that this year when all three AL East teams bowed out immediately.

The last time any central division team from either division reached the WS? 2016. CS? 2019. Kinda lame, can’t be happy with it, go west/east!

For anyone who's been here a while: try going back to scan a WS thread from a few years ago. I went back to the 2019 thread to check something, and it was so weird--we're going on about stuff I don't remember at all. There was an IBB issued in the first game that NoTime and I really disagreed on; huh? Lots of stuff about when to remove starting pitchers I don't remember (including, I think, Strasburg throwing a no-hitter or a shutout--I remember him being the series MVP, but not any one particular game). A controversial umpire call that James weighed in on: remember nothing. And that's only four years ago.

Maybe it's an obvious example, but I can remember Gibson's walk-off in game 1 of the 1988 WS far more clearly than I can remember anything at all about the 2021 WS, when the Braves (finally) won another one.

It's probably about context. In addition to being one of the greatest sports moments I had ever seen, that 1988 game was the last one I saw with my mom's dad. I still remember us looking at each other in disbelief that what we had just seen had happened.

I was walking the floor while working in a record store in '88 when Gibson hit that. We had a TV on...I wasn't big at all on that year's match-up, so I was only half paying attention when he hit it.

Lots of random stuff on last night's game here:

https://www.mlb.com/news/stats-facts-from-game-1-of-2023-world-series

10) Evan Longoria, who is back in the Fall Classic for the first time since 2008, became the fourth player with a World Series hit at both age 23 or younger and 38-plus, joining Eddie Murray, Pee Wee Reese and Willie Mays. It was his first World Series hit in 5,748 days, with the prior being Oct. 27, 2008. That is the longest span of days between World Series hits, per STATS. Longoria became the first position player to appear in the World Series at least 15 years after his last trip.

Gyac: corny old Joe Posnanski agrees with you:

The other day, I was interviewed by a delightful Japanese reporter, Kazumasa Masuyoshi from Kyodo News, and he asked me back-to-back questions like so:

How high can Shohei Ohtani get on the list of all-time baseball greats?

Does he need postseason play — World Series play, specifically — to get to that lofty place?

I’ve answered that first question many times already; Ohtani, the last three seasons, has done things that have never been done before, and my feeling is if he could maintain that absurd level for, say, eight-to-10 more years, he’d have to be in the discussion for greatest-ever.

The second question...well, my first impulse was to stand up for the individual, to say, “Hey, Shohei Ohtani can’t singlehandedly make a bad team good, no baseball player can do that...” And my second impulse was to think of Ted Williams, one postseason, one World Series, hit just .200 with no home runs, and we all place him in that stratosphere of all-time greats anyway (as we should).

But then, my third impulse was to say this: Yes. To reach his highest heights, Shohei Ohtani absolutely needs to not only play in the postseason but also do magical things once he gets there. Ted Williams played in a different time. Ernie Banks played in a different time. October has always been baseball’s biggest stage, but it is now baseball’s only stage.

You can win 104 games like Atlanta...and the season can feel like a bust. “How can we fix this?” a desperate Braves fan wrote to me. You can win 100-plus games like the Dodgers have the last three years and have fans desperate for change. You can be the story of baseball for six months the way the Baltimore Orioles were this year, and then, in three devastating games, become utterly forgotten.

. . . and on the flip side, my son and I are already talking about heading to Orioles spring training next year.

(And then goes on to talk about Garcia, who in three weeks has gone from “Wow, I didn’t realize this guy had that good of a year” relative anonymity to everybody who was watching last night just waiting for him to hit that HR.)

Right--from a personal perspective, I totally agree with you. The postseason is one part of a big picture.

The sport is a source of both optimism and despair in a way that I don't think others are (for me, anyway).

You have to make it to the postseason and winning over 100 guarantees you a bye but those wild card races were brutal this year. Miss out because of a bum series or ball dropped at the wrong time or being walked off has got to hurt a lot. So it’s not that the regular season doesn’t matter: it’s just that it’s the start, not the end.

(Arguably) losing a game because a veteran player missed a sign.

I think the next batter ground into a double play anyway

In the NL Championship Series, the Diamondbacks fooled the Phillies by baiting their hitters into flailing at pitches off the plate. That’s a much tougher task against the more patient Rangers, who drew 10 walks (one intentional) in Game 1 and pounced on mistakes.

Even Garcia took some tough borderline pitches last night.

"i’m kinda like that. when i was growing up the national league were mysterious unknowns, the Other, which made them implacable enemies once the WS came around.

Yes, we might catch the Cubs or Dodgers on the nationally televised Game of the Week, but otherwise the NL might as well have been from a different country. "

Growing up in Indiana in the 80s, it was just the exact opposite. With WGN and TBS, you grew up watching lots of Cubs and Braves games on TV and the occasional Reds games, usually on the road mostly the west coast trips.

It changed a bit when WGN added doing quite a few White Sox games, never as much as the Cubs. Got to think it might have been '83 when WGN added the Sox as it was the year that Fisk came over and they had Ron Kittle, Greg Walker and LaMarr Hoyt won his Cy Young. It was either 83 or the year before as that was one of the few years I remember seeing more than a few AL games other than the Saturday game of the week.

I followed baseball big time and had a Sporting News subscription for years, so I was a big time reader of box scores - but players like Brett or Wade Boggs you rarely got to see them play and never on a regular basis at all.

all star game was always so cool because you got to see all these players from the other league you had only read about.

My recollection, growing up in the northwest suburbs of chicago, was that WGN started showing White Sox games just prior to the Frank Thomas era. I got into the White Sox almost as much as the Cubs during this time, they were just an incredible fun squad. Big Hurt, Ventura, Lance Johnson, Tim Raines, Guillen, Fisk, and guys like Burks, Bo Jackson, and Julio Franco coming through. They were just an absolutely fun team. Not to mention McDowell, Alvarez, Fernandez, ancient Charlie Hough, etc as some of the starting pitchers they had at the time. That's a team that should have won at least one World series but they were hitting on all cylinders at the wrong time and half a step below several other squads.

Wasn't it a pretty common experience for the Cubs and Cardinals to have a stranglehold on the midwestern states through the '80s because of the first national TV contracts with one team? (Or were the Yankees already there?)

Or do I mean Cubs and Braves...

I think the Cards first gained a big following thanks to the strength of their radio signal.

In Denver in the 80s, we got the Cubs via WGN and the Braves via TBS. The Cubs were lovable losers, while the Braves were not lovable.

the big hurt, such a cool nickname - his card ranked high for me in my collection

much better than my nickname for Yordan Alvarez, "General Soreness"

I fell for Thomas like no player in years...I was just going to advise 龜 to take an interest in Alvarez, who feels very much like a version of Thomas (not quite there yet, but close).

Lance Johnson via Hawk Harrelson was "One Dog", he was such a fun player. I forgot the ChiSox had Tony Phillips during that era as well, he had a typically incredible 1 1/2 seasons with them in 1996-97.

I need you all to know Merrill isn’t really his first name

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cy9PSVqPXbx/

I fell for Thomas like no player in years...I was just going to advise 龜 to take an interest in Alvarez, who feels very much like a version of Thomas (not quite there yet, but close).

― clemenza, Saturday, October 28, 2023 2:01 PM (four hours ago

yeah yordan has such an easy grace to him, i heard on the broadcast he had surgeries to both knees last year and that was hard for me to believe. unfortunately i came back hating the astros because in the course of beating the phils last year my friend got me up to speed meant on 2017. now that they've lost this year i they seem more fallible so less unlikeable. i like yordan a lot, i like altuve, i like that you can be 5'6 in this game and still be a monster.

Not quite as close as I thought--will post in the Alvarez thread I started.

MLB just had Adrian Beltre on the their pre-game show (along with his son, an up-and-coming prospect). Amazing, but it's the first time I've ever heard him speak. He's throwing out the first pitch with Fergie Jenkins tonight.

I've seen very little of A-Rod/Ortiz/Jeter in the broadcast both--maybe a few minutes of each, not ever together, I don't think. In the past, we usually got an alternate broadcast to Fox's that I would watch. Anyway, I'm really enjoying them. Ortiz, talking about Garcia: "Pitchers, look at me. Do not hit this guy. It brings out his evil side, and then he's even more dangerous."

i love jordan montgomery