Well, it's gonna be the stupid Braves and the stupid Astros
Could've been a more inspiring matchup, is all I'm saying
Look, it’s not that I’m unhappy with who won the ALCS. Sure, the Astros are gross cheaters who cheated their way to a World Series title, but so are the Red Sox, and at least the Astros never gifted the Dodgers their best player as a way to dump someone else’s salary, waited a few years, and then did it again. Plus, the Astros have Dusty Baker, who is great and deserves to win a World Series. Plus plus, there really aren’t that many Astros left over from the 2017 team. It’s bad, but it could be worse.
And it’s not that I’m unhappy with who won the NLCS, obviously. Sure, the Braves are a racist team with a racist fanbase that does a racist chant that ruins every home game they play, but on the other hand…
Hm.
On the other hand, Joc Pederson has been wearing a pearl necklace during the playoffs, which is a lot of fun.
Look, to an objective observer, which in the NLCS I was not, there is no way that the Braves are ever the correct choice to root for in any baseball game. Oh, they’re up against the arrogant Cardinals? Well, the Braves do the Chop, and encourage the Chop and play a sound cue for the Chop, all of which are worse. Oh, they’re facing the constantly irritating Padres? Well, the Braves extorted Cobb County for a boatload of money so they could replace a 20-year-old stadium and move away from Atlanta proper, which is where the Black people live. Oh, they’re up against the Dodgers? Well, the Braves went out of their way to have a has-been anti-vaxxer sing the anthem.
The Atlanta Braves are bad. Just about any time they play another team, it’s a slam dunk to root for their opponent.
And then we have the Astros. Alas, the Astros. Alastros, if you will.
Because the Astros are the villains of baseball, and their only punishment for cheating is that everyone hates them. That was specifically, intentionally their punishment for cheating to win a World Series. Don’t take it from me. Take it from Rob Manfred:
“I think if you look at the faces of the Houston players, as they’ve been out there publicly addressing this issue, they have been hurt by this,” Manfred said. “They will live with questions about what went on in 2017 and 2018 for the rest of their lives.”
Poor Astros. Poor, whiny Astros who can’t stop complaining about how people are yelling at them and mocking them and banging trash cans and booing them and boy, people don’t like us and what did we ever do and why does everyone hate us anyway?
The answer is, because you deserve it! This is the consequence of the actions your team chose! The only reason there were any consequences at all is that Mike Fiers broke the omerta code and told everyone, and a bunch of people got mad at him first, because in every situation, a bunch of people are going to suck. So all of the hate that’s come their way, and all the invectives, and all of the scorn? They have it coming.
Except Dusty doesn’t.
Dusty Baker has been maligned for more than 20 years for never winning The Big One, famously coming close one time with the Giants in a year I can’t remember for some reason, then losing the Steve Bartman game (and also the next game) to blow a 3-2 NLCS lead the next year, then losing three straight to the Giants while he was with the Reds to blow a 2-0 NLDS lead, then losing in the NLDS with the Nationals. That reputation has kept getting him fired even though he always wins in the regular season, and that reputation is the only reason he’s not referred to as “future Hall of Famer Dusty Baker.”
This is silly. The playoffs are a crapshoot, especially now when there are multiple rounds to just get to the World Series, as opposed to the ‘50s when the team with the best record in the league would just jump right in. It’s hard to win, and it’s not a commentary on Dusty that his teams have happened to fall short. Someone’s team always has to, and he just keeps drawing the wrong straw.
Dusty has spent his entire managerial career being a good person and a good manager, and his reward has been getting unceremoniously dismissed from every job he’s had. It’s unfair and it’s wrong, and now the Houston Astros can make all that go away.
Look, it won’t be painless. People will call it redemption for the team, as if that’s what redemption is. They’ll say that this one is for real, as if we know for sure that the Astros are not still cheating in some new way. They’ll give all sorts of awful takes about how this clears Altuve’s name and how Correa will be remembered for this and it will be, if we’re being honest here, nauseating.
And other than the one thing (the Atlanta Braves franchise), it’s not like the Braves are unlikable. I like Giants legends Adam Duvall and Ehire Adrianza and Will Smith (one time I was in the clubhouse and I saw him do a solid Bumgarner impression, which I will remember for a long time), and no one has ever said a bad word about Freddie Freeman, and Joc Pederson embracing his inner suburban housewife with the pearl necklace and the glass of wine on the field is absolutely delightful:
(You can click through if the embed doesn’t work)
But there’s just no contest. Dusty Baker deserves this and I want him to have it. All right-thinking people should want him to have it. So go Dusty. Get that ring, man. You should’ve had it a long time ago.