When does the World Series start? Anybody know? When are the Red Sox going to take on the Cubs?
That’s right, they’re not.
Game six of this year’s Fall Classic came on TV Saturday night and I realized the World Series could actually end and I had only caught a few innings of the final series. Sure enough there was no game seven and I thought- where did it go?
The postseason was incredible as everyone knows, and although my beloved Braves were taken out early in the divisional series with the Cubs, I continued to watch.
I must admit that although I detest the Cubs, having been forced by my Chicago-native father to watch them lose throughout the 1980s, I found myself rooting for them.
It’s the underdog thing. It gets me every time. You put an underdog up against a former World Series champ, and I’m going to go for the underdog (unless the former champs are the Braves).
This is probably because I was an underdog my entire athletic career. Having suffered from Spinal Meningitis at the age of three, I was put into gymnastics to simply build my strength. It turned out that I loved it and wanted to keep going with it. All along in my 16-year career, however, I was told I wasn’t strong enough. Yet, negative comments only fueled my fire. I was determined to prove people wrong and every now and then I did. That is what I love about sports.
No matter what a team is ranked or how many wins they have, a small team from Hicksville (or Alabama-Birmingham) always has the possibility of a surprising upset.
So when the Boston Red Sox, with former LSU alumnus Todd Walker, and the Chicago Cubs had very real chances of making their first World Series appearances in over 50 years, most of the country was elated. Cubs fans came out of the woodwork after many of them had given up (like i had) in the ’80s.
But the underdogs did not win. The mighty Goliaths of baseball, the New York Yankees, once again earned themselves a spot in the biggest baseball series of the year while the Marlins returned for the second time in six years and won it for the second time.
It’s a real shame though. Guys like Marlins pitcher Josh Beckett and catcher Pudge Rodriguez had never been to the World Series before and to them it was probably the greatest week of their lives. Beckett, in his third season in the major leagues, realized every young boy’s dream of throwing the last pitch to win the World Series.
Rodriguez, after spending several years with the sub-par Rangers, also got his first shot in the big game. After many years of going game-to-game and living on the road, the World Series is something Rodriguez is unlikely to ever forget.
But, unfortunately much of the country, including myself, did forget it. Media Life, an online Web site for media planners and buyers, reported that although there was an increase of viewership during the league championships, this year’s final series ranked third on the list of least watched World Series.
For that, I feel sympathy for the Marlins who played as hard as they could play and sacrificed a lot to get there.
But I still didn’t watch them.