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Sunday October 13, 2024
Rooting Interests in the 2024 LCSes, Or Why the Yankees and Mets May Be Racist
The 2024 MLB season is down to four teams, and many are hoping for a reprise of the 2000 Subway Series (NY vs. NY), but longtime readers, or short-time readers, or people who barely glance at this blog, will know that that's not me. I want the other matchup (LA vs. CLE), for many, many reasons, and start with the obvious: Yankees Suck.
Here are the familiar numbers again, 40 and 27, the pennants and titles the Yankees hold, which is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY ahead of any other team. Second place for titles is the St. Louis Cardinals with 11, and no other team is in double digits. And, again, the Yankees have *27*. Comparatively, the Dodgers, who have had their successes, have only seven, while Guards and Mets are at just two apiece. Plus if we keep the World Series Yankee-free another season, I think we'll set a post-Babe Ruth record for pennant futility: 15 straight seasons. C'mon, people, we can do this! We're so close!
But there are other reasons I want LA-CLE. Those teams have the lowest payrolls. I mean, the Dodgers are fifth overall, and I guess Ohtani's contract is mostly deferred and so uncounted, but the two New York teams are 1 and 2. It's easy to forget, too, since they're such underdogs, but the Mets are No. 1 in payroll. The Mets. I guess they're still paying Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer? Yes and yes. They're also still paying Bobby Bonilla, who retired in 2001 and who's getting paid through 2035. Lesson there, kids: get a good financial planner.
But I also want the Dodgers because of Shohei and I want Cleveland because they haven't won it all since 1948—the longest title drought in the sport. Second place is a tie between the Padres and Brewers: est. 1969, never won. Then it's my Mariners: est. 1977, never been. Just think of the distance we've come since 1948. Rock 'n' roll didn't exist. Elvis Presley was 13 and in junior high, Martin Luther King was 19 and graduating from Morehouse College. Donald Trump was just 2! Temperamentally the same, of course.
Maybe best of all, an LA vs. CLE World Series would not only reprise the 1920 World Series (Brooklyn Robins vs. Cleveland Indians), it would be a matchup of the first two teams to break the color barrier. That'd be cool. I'm not saying the Yankees and Mets would be racist if they beat them, and denied us this, but it'd be close.
EXTRA READING:
- At the start of the season, Joe Posnanski counted down from the worst team in baseball (the Rockies) to the best, and this is where the remaining teams ranked per Joe: Dodgers (1), Yankees (10), Guardians (17), and Mets (18). This is the Poz who predicted great things for the Mariners, remember, to which Michael Schur deadpanned “Really,” speaking for everyone in Seattle.