I recently came across a sports person on the radio. The only time I hear these people is when I’m driving alone – we can’t get radio reception inside the house where we live unless via satellite, and radio broadcasting is so annoying that when the ads crop up I turn it off and then forget to turn it on again. I listen only in my truck.
The guy on my truck radio said said that there was a “conspiracy theory” about that claimed that the LA Dodgers had tanked the baseball National League championship series to allow the Milwaukee Brewers to go to the World Series. The reasoning behind it is that there is going to be a baseball strike in December, and stadiums may be closed to any games for a long period thereafter. Behind that looming strike is a dysfunctional game behind which a few wealthy teams dominate the sport while the rest subsist – not in poverty- but in minor league status. They only exist to allow the wealthy teams competition during the regular season prior to the fall extravaganza.
Indeed, I am told, 2015 was the last time that a small market teams made the World Series, the Kansas City Royals. I had to look that up. I do remember the 2016 World Series, where the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians, and I and others here have written quite a bit about scripted sports. To me, that series appeared to have been rigged.
A baseball game rigged? People imagine that a game that appears to be given over to random chance can’t be controlled. But it can be and is rigged. Just as football can be controlled by missed tackles and bad referee calls, baseball too can be fixed. All it takes is an understanding between pitcher and batter that a certain pitch is to be delivered … a curve, fastball, slider … and the batters, who are so damned good at their trade that they will connect, will take it to the next county. It does not matter if it is 100 mph, if the batter knows it is coming, there’s a good chance he will hit it. Time and again in the 2016 series I saw late-inning dramatics as the Cubs ended a 108 year drought, and thought fake, fake, fake.
If baseball were not fixed, it would be like cricket … crickets. Pitchers are too good, and batters, no matter their amazing talent, rarely see something to hit. If you like a 1-0 pitchers dual, you’re a true fan, and God Bless You, but the game cannot exist without dramatics, home runs, line drives up the alley, and sterling defensive plays. I have, even in my twenties when I paid attention, thought that our best athletes are baseball players. Football players are also gifted, but tend to be more one dimensional, which is why when the ball changes hands, eleven players leave and eleven new players come in. The original rules of the game allowed only limited substitution, one at a time, so that offensive players had to switch and play defense. I don’t know when that changed but remember that to be the rule when I played football, 1964-68.
Growing up in Billings, Montana, we were aware of big league baseball, and I was a fan of the Milwaukee Braves. One time I remember that a baseball game was on TV at our neighbors house, and the Milwaukee Braves were playing. Hank Aaron came to bat, and grounded out, and I said “I thought he was supposed to be good.” So I must have been preschool at the time. We did not have a TV, and would not get one until 1956, when I was six.
I had cousins in Wisconsin, where we occasionally visited. I even got to attend a couple of games in old County Stadium. Milwaukee is a great baseball town, so that in 1966 when the team owner, Bill Bartholomay, moved the team to Atlanta, it was left high and dry. There was no good financial reason for the move other than he wanted more and Milwaukee was not enough. He jumped on a bigger market no matter the amazing support given the team in all of Wisconsin. It was a real asshole move, not unlike Bob Irsay in 1984 moving the Baltimore Colts Indianapolis in the middle of the night.
I stopped following baseball then, but my brother Joe remained a Braves fan all his life. It was not until the early 70s, when I was married to a woman I did not love, who thought that having slid down a birth canal on Long Island made her special, that I adopted the Cincinnati Reds as my team. They had a dramatic playoff series against the Mets and I was getting really annoyed at her and that team. However, I never cared for the Reds or the city. I just needed a safe harbor in the marriage, a place to be free of New York. It’s a great city, I agree, but the family I married into used to sit around the breakfast table and complain about “Canadians”, code for Jews. They hated them. They were also of German-Irish descent, but had ditched the German part and rewrote history to make themselves pure Irish.
Martin Short, the comedian, jokes that being Steve Martin’s friend is like the movie Deliverance … it’s a nice movie as it moves along, but eventually … out comes the banjo. With that first marriage it was an OK life, even as I was unhappy and burdened with too many kids. Such is life. With her family, inevitably, out came the Irish music. I took in too much of the Clancy’ Brothers and “up the long ladder and down the short rope, to hell with King Billy and God bless the pope, and if that doesn’t to it we’ll tear ’em in two, and send them to hell with their red, white and blue!” That is the de facto Irish national anthem, sung as a drunken chant in pubs in New York City and probably the homeland too. All it takes is one voice, even a lone inebriate in a bar, to stand and yell out “Up the long ladder …” and all stand and it begins.
I should add that my first wife and I drank together, but I was only different in that I had a deep desire to stop the habit. I tried on and off in that marriage, but it was hard when booze was always in good supply. I have that weakness, and can only not drink at all, not in moderation. I did finally succeed in ending the habit, and that ended the marriage too. I say that so as not to be too haughty about the Irish. But I did get my fill of them.
The city of Seattle has a baseball franchise, the Mariners, that has taken hold and has good support. But back in the 1969 when baseball was trying to expand, they miscalculated and put a franchise there, the Pilots, that languished. Jim Bouton wrote the 1970 book Bill Four, delightful, about his year there. The New York Public Library selected it as one of the greatest published in the 20th century – a baseball book written by a player! Toward the end (I’m going on memory), he laments that the city of Seattle seemed more interested in classical music and operas than baseball. (That is, to be charitable to Mr. Bouton, a slight misstatement.)
The franchise was moved to Milwaukee in 1970, and was renamed the Brewers. It thrived, but Milwaukee was always at heart a National League town even as the Brewers were American League. When Jim Crane sold the Houston Astros franchise he allowed that in 2013 the Astros would move to the American League. That left two unbalanced leagues with 13 teams in one and 15 in the other. In 1998, when the Tampa Bay and Arizona were granted franchises, the Brewers were allowed to jump to the National League to balance everything out at 15 teams each. The city of Milwaukee once again had an NL franchise, and all was right with the world.
I was unaware of baseball this year. I long ago abandoned the Reds, and paid no attention, especially during Covid when stadiums were empty. I thought the team might do better that year, as the franchise existed even with the team playing before empty stadiums, but no. They still stunk.
I noticed last week on a You Tube video that the Brewers fans had packed what was once called Miller Park, which had replaced the old County Stadium where I attended games. They were wild as the Brew Crew played the Dodgers, and then noticed that the game was being played in Los Angeles! The Brewers fans were watching on the giant screen, and still, it was a full house!
I still cannot sit through a game. I am not a “baseball” fan, but I do like the city of Milwaukee, and am delighted that they have their team, their idols (“Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” was once their chant”, Warren and Johnny, in the 50s and 60s). I hope they win this series against the Tampa Bay Rays … what? Who are they? This is a team initially named the Devil Rays that had to drop the word Devil due to religious objections to that name in their small market. They, like the Brewers, have been granted a seat in the SHOW this year due to the impending strike.
Yeah, I believe the conspiracy theory. The Dodgers, who spend more in luxury tax than many teams spend in total salary, have orchestrated this year’s Series, probably along with the Yankees, Mets, Astros, Red and White Sox, Cubs, and all of the other wealthy franchises. I m going to enjoy the strike, and hope that baseball fixes their broken game.
