A sports story for
people who don’t read sports stories
This has never happened
before. Not in baseball. Not in any other big time professional sport.
The seven game World
Series pitted the Washington Nationals against the Houston Astros.
Washington won four of the seven games. the seven game series 4 games to
3. All four of the wins were in
Houston. Houston won three games, all of them in Washington.
There’s an unwritten law
in every sport: The home crowd’s going to cheer on the home team and the
energy thus generated will help propel a win. It’s not a law like gravity
or the or “No turn on red.” And there’s
no jail time for teams and fans who don’t observe it. But still, it’s
what we do, right?
Championship runups and
playoffs in every field are subject to this law. Maybe we need a revision
that describes levels of violations. A
4-3 series MUST have at least one home field victory per team.
Oh, but wait.
Would that mean the “Mighty Nats” would have to throw a game? Now that
would be violating an actual law. We don’t want that. Big Sports
already has enough trouble keeping their teams on the straight and
narrow. Plus, the Nats don’t have the control or discipline to play like
that.
Here’s a thought:
The team moved to Washington from Montreal starting with the 2005 season. They
used to be the Montreal Expos. So that means there’s a 1969-2005 tradition of
Canadianism wafting around these guys. Canadians, as a rule, are pretty polite
and self effacing. Some say they’re boring. Well… they aren’t. Just look at some National Hockey League
videos from before the no-weapons-on-the-ice rule took hold.
If the Nats stay in
Washington for a while, they’ll take on the values of their home town:
brutality, confusion, incompetence, bullying, lying, cheating, stealing, back
scratching, back stabbing, inappropriate groping, laziness, grandstanding,
horse trading, overspending, underspending and conducting wars instead of
baseball games. Not to worry, though. They don’t always stay there very
long, even though there are no term limits.
Between 1872 and 1899
nine different teams called DC home. In the modern era, the Washington
Senators (1901-1960) became the Minnesota Twins. Then came the “new” Washington
Senators, playing there from 1961 to 1971. They moved south to become the Texas
Rangers. And, appropriately enough for a town that doesn’t do teamwork,
there was no team there between the ‘71 and ‘05.
Some people say there’s still
no team there. They are wrong.
TODAY’S QUOTE:
-“Washington is a city
of northern charm and southern efficiency.” --John F. Kennedy
I’m Wes Richards. My
opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments
to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2019
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