Post-Season Blahs

I wish I could get more excited about the post-season match-ups this year.  The Yankees, Dodgers, Angels and Phillies is Fox ratings heaven, but it totally fails to move me.  With three of the teams from the two largest markets in the country, and the fourth from the fifth largest market and largest single-team market, it just seems like too much of the rich getting richer.  Hell, I get a enough of that by following the current economic news on TV and in the papers.

Someone once famously said, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel.”  A more contemporary analogy might be, rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the share price of Exxon to go up, as the world gradually gets warmer.

The Yankees had a great regular season, but I can’t drum up any enthusiasm for watching them play.  I just can’t get myself to root for a number of their biggest stars.  ARod is an all-time great, but I just find him very uninspiring.  He’s got it all as a player, but every time I see him I can’t get out of mind that he’s a spoiled, vain pretty boy, who’s always seemed more concerned with winning awards and getting the biggest paycheck than winning pennants.

I kind of like Derek Jeter, but I find it impossible to listen to those nitwits Joe Buck and Tim McCarver go on all game long about what a great shortstop Jeter is when he’s been the worst defensive starting shortstop in the American League for going on the last decade.   I was overjoyed when Jeter muffed a tailor-made doubleplay ball in last night’s game, if only because I thought that Buck and McCarver might shut up about Jeter for a couple of innings.

When I was young, I remember how exciting the 1977, ‘78 and ‘81 World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers were.  Some of it was just the excitement of youth, and not being a jaded as I am now.  Also, I think, the Yankees and Dodgers had much of the same starting line-ups for years during that period, which made the teams more familiar to those of us who didn’t root for the teams during the regular season.  I absolutely identified Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey with the Dodgers, and Jackson, Munson, Chambliss, Randolph, Dent and Nettles with the Yankees.

The Yankees and Dodgers still have a lot of great players, of course, but the Dodgers are more up-and-coming, and the Yankees seem even more full of rent-a-studs than they did back in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s.

The Angels have never been a team that I’ve rooted for, what with their being from greater Los Angeles.  Also, as a Giants’ fan, I’m still harboring ill feelings about the 2002 World Series.  I’d root for the Phillies, but they won last year, and they really didn’t have a good enough regular season (93-69) for me to feel like they deserve to win back-to-back titles.

What I’d really like to see this time of year is one of the also-rans or perennial under-achievers make the final four, kind of like the Rays going to the World Series last year.  Now, there was a team that had taken its lumps for years and finally risen to the top.

When the final four teams all come from the wealthiest eight teams in baseball, it just feels like, what’s the point in even playing the the first 162 games.  If the teams everyone expects to win in April, because they’ve thrown the most money at players going into the season, do in fact win, I always find it a little disappointing.