We had a good Game 1 of the 2023 World Series last night. The Rangers scored early with some nice hitting and baserunning from Evan Carter, who, two months ago, was playing AA ball and now is batting third for the American League champions. How do you get a better story than that? Maybe with Corey Seager's 2-run, ninth-inning, game-tying bomb of a homerun? (That's more emotion than I've ever seen from him.) Or Adolis Garcia's opposite-field walk-off in the 11th after being hit by yet another pitch? (That's about the same emotion I see from him.) He keeps getting hit by pitches and then keeps mashing homeruns. You wonder when they'll stop hitting him with pitches. 

Joey Poz (not Joey Pants) goes deep on Adolis in his column today, worth reading, fun reading, but I wanted to quote some from one of his posts earlier this month, way back on Oct. 4, when he indulges himself a bit by talking about what he'd do if he were Commissioner of Baseball. It's a question he gets asked often, he says, and his answer (he also says) is usually uninteresting because he takes it too seriously. He thinks too much of the fans and the limits of his power. So this is his answer if he didn't give a shit about any of that. Oddly, in speaking from the heart, he winds up speaking for this fan:

I would work out a deal with Oakland, expand the game to Nashville and Montreal, create eight divisions, and I would have the eight division winners, and only the eight division winners, make the playoffs.

Eight is plenty of playoff teams for baseball. Heck, I could probably be talked into four.

I also would limit teams to 10 pitchers (this could be a gradual decrease over, say, five years), and I would come up with incentives to get starting pitchers to stay in the games longer, and I would be very public with my disappointment any time a manager took out a starter throwing a no-hitter or took out a hitter with a chance to do something historic, and I would get rid of the zombie runner, and I would work out a rule to stop position players from pitching so much, and I would bring back bullpen cars, and I would create Larry Doby Day, and I would make Opening Day in Cincinnati every year, and I would probably bring back the four-pitch intentional walk (to give fans the fair chance to boo), and I would ...

... It would be a busy first day.

Not to get all Molly Bloom about this, but: Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!!!!

What would I do beyond this? I gotta give that some thought. That'll be a Comm. Lundy column.