We had something I found interesting going in a post I had to take down due to emergence of hatefulness, an ugly aspect of the ongoing mass shooting sprees, all fake. I’ll come back to it.
Tyrone mentioned that one team, the Cleveland Indians/Guardians, hold the futility record, not having won a World Series since 1948, 77 years. I looked a bit further and found that there are a few teams who had not made WS appearances (win or lose) for long stretches of time, like Pittsburgh, Seattle, Oakland, Minnesota, Colorado and Cincinnati, and they shared one thing in common: small TV markets.
The structure of the game has a lot to do with this, as television revenue from national contracts is shared equally among teams, but local broadcasts are owned exclusively by the teams. Thus do Los Angeles (Dodgers, not Angels), New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and recently Houston, take regular turns. Baseball has attempted to fix this imbalance by imposing a “luxury tax” on teams that overspend on talent, but it is not very effective. The rich teams just pay the tax, allowing the poorer ones to feed a bit off it.
“My team”, sorry, cannot escape fanboy youth, the Cincinnati Reds, have not made a World Series appearance since 1990, 34 years of futility with a few appearances (quick exits) in the expanded playoffs. That 1990 series was interesting from an overall love of the game perspective: It involved two small market teams, Cincinnati and Oakland, which by itself is TV cancer. For another TV negative, the Reds swept the series in four games, depriving the networks of those three final games*. I knew that the Reds had a futility record going, but did not realize that the Oakland As endured the same fate. That team has also not had an appearance in the big show in 34 years, 1990 being the final appearance for both teams.
I suspect that the lords of baseball, to save the franchises, realized that the game needed to be juiced to keep fan interest high. Thus began a string of fixed World Series, the most notable coming to my mind the Chicago Cubs win over the Cleveland Indians (their name at that time), in 2016, their first win in 108 years. Numbers people get out your slide rules. The series went seven games, and was loaded with late-inning theatrics, home runs and ties and all kinds of fun. In the end, the Cubs were scheduled to win, as Freemasons, who invented the game, deemed it time. Then the Cubbies faded to the back of the room again. They are back this year, however. Who knows?
The game has long been in decline. During Covid, when freedom of assembly was chucked out the window, teams were playing to empty stadiums. If you think the game by itself is the draw, think again. Baseball before an empty house is like a public speaking contest without microphones. But I thought my Reds might have an advantage over other teams during that time, as empty stadiums were something they were quite used to. But no, they still stunk.
How to fix a baseball game? It really only takes a pitcher, but the batter having knowledge of the coming pitch helps too. As any manager will tell you, even if a pitcher repeatedly throws 100 mph fast balls, unless you mix it up with off-speed stuff, the batter will adapt, and good bye little red-seamed ball. But suppose that a batter is tipped to a coming pitch, no matter the speed. He’ll take it to the next county. They are that good, as hitting balls is something they have practiced so much that it takes an elite pitcher to pitch a shutout, much less a no-hitter. The best I’ve ever seen? Randy Johnson. Views will certainly differ on that.
Predictions? About the future? I don’t know! But generally I think it a safe guess (not bet) that the 2025 World Series will have two teams from large TV markets, and that it will go seven games.
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*Individual players are awarded bonuses at the end of the World Series, and for each series, be it three, five or seven games, the player award pool is determined by the smallest number of games it takes to win. So for the World Series, even if it goes seven games, the player pool is based on the first four games only. That’s an incentive not to cheat.
Piece of Mindful 
I no longer waste my time on purportedly professional “sports”. Mainly because of the inherent corruption, the abuse and PROMOTION of alcohol and other drugs, and the indirect subjugation of education too – whatever that may be worth. The normal dim-wits playing these big games are frequently awful human beings, and their antics off-game are atrocious. YEAH! That’s what I want to be when I grow up!
I did watch, back when.
John McEnroe was someimes a real dick on the court, and not particularly quick, but an absolute master of racket control – WOODEN racket, for a while.
Baseball is the subject however, and Mark commented on a pitcher; I will too. Greg Maddux. Not particularly fast, but, I thought then, an absolute master of ball control – ESPECIALLY: Speed. A pleasure to watch him confound even the “elite” batters with the huge slow curves.
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I really must agree with you, but even so, I still get caught up in it. Totally agree on Maddux, what a smooth machine he was.
I could have attended last night’s Broncos-Bengals game, as our son has season tickets and was not planning on going. I opted out, but have done it a couple of times, once to allow our grandson to go. But as I mentioned to my wife, after the game ends around 10PM local time, we would have to walk a half-mile to get on a train to ride to a parking garage, and then drive home. It would be 11-11:30, and so much easier to watch on TV! In fact, when at the games I did attend, I spent more time watching the big screen replays as the real live action.
Alcohol was never a problem at a Broncos game – by the time I would wait through the line, missing the action, and paying $9 or ten buck for a cup of Coors bathwater, it was not worth my time.
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Watching the Sox Yanks game from a sports bar in Philly. Coincidentally they are showing a documentary on ESPN on Mad Dog Maddux. Great pitcher, but looking at the highlight reel they show of his strikeouts he definitely benefited from a wider strike zone than they call now. Also couldn’t help but notice he wore 31, or 13 backwards.
Also the Masonic temple in downtown Philly is really impressive. Right across the street from city hall, likely not a coincidence. Wish I had time to go on a tour this trip. Pictures of the interior show some really interesting artwork, like a giant stained glass window of Truman in Freemason regalia with the big ol’ all seeing eye hovering over him. And he was also a Shriner, reserved for 33rd degree Masons only.
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Bar trivia is another psyop. They always lean on recent film and pop entertainment which is of course awful.
They also live to throw in things like space travel trivia for the brainless masses.
Which is one reason I haven’t participated in years. A decade amd more ago i used to enjoy it when they asked more serious questions like geography and actual science.
For example they just had a question on the Mandela effect. The question was what phenomenon makes people believe it was the Bernstein besrs vs Berenstein bears. I wanted to yell out “CIA operation CHAOS”! When everything you know is wrong.
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In the previous, now deleted, post where I commented on the Cleveland Indians/Guardians being in on a fix of the 1948 AL playoff game, I forgot to mention that two Guardian pitchers this year have been suspended while being investigated for gambling.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/guardians-pitchers-emmanuel-clase-and-luis-ortiz-remain-on-paid-leave-amid-mlbs-gambling-investigations/
Selling pitches, rather than whole games, is not new. I recall years ago reading that Japanese baseball was infected by such betting patterns. My sense is that online in-game betting on the NFL is also affecting game “narratives” that may be an attempt to keep prearranged outcomes from appearing so obvious. It isn’t working, Broncos fans, is it?
PS- the suspension of four players and the lifetime ban of another came in the wake of the Ohtani scandal which was a fire MLB had to put out fast. That seems to have worked, so far.
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The Boston College basketball betting scandal from 78-79 is quite interesting, i read the book “Fixed” many years ago. The central point was point shaving didn’t work and the mobsters didn’t make any money. Quite hard to believe, it appears a fake scandal to make it look like its hard and rare to fix college basketball, and everyone involved was freelancing.
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Hey Tyrone since you are a baseball historian, I wanted to ask about the ’46 World Series Sox vs Cardinals. They played a song about it on MIT radio today – where they talk about the infamous “Pesky held the ball” play, which allowed Enos Slaughter to score, I believe from first. Also Teddy Ballgame failed to show up in that series. Wonder if you had any thoughts on that one.
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I don’t think the series was fishy- Williams was injured. He got hit with a pitch in the elbow a few days before the series began and couldn’t swing well. As for the mad dash in game 7, it was Red Sox curse stuff where Don DiMaggio got hurt the inning before when tying the game with a double but pulled a hamstring. His replacement was out of place and not much with the glove and the Cardinal baserunner was a daredevil anyway and it was a perfect storm of Red Sox luck. Kind of a Bill Buckner-lite moment. Besides, the gamblers would have known the Sox were cursed and probably stayed away since football was underway and that was where the easy grift was, imo. The next year integration began and the Sox went back under a rock for another twenty years.
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Thats an interesting take. The Sox did have a few more good years in the 40s before becoming abominable in the 50s and early 60s. Remember Dr Strangeglove?
I met Pesky a handful of times, couldn’t be nicer. This was 79-81 when me and my family went to Red Sox in Spring Training for a week in March, stayed at the team Holiday Inn hotel and I bugged all the players for autographs – during practice, by the pool and at the bar (Yaz liked his cocktails and smokes).
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