The best baseball season was 2010, of course. But I'll take off my orange-colored glasses for a moment. Look what's happened this year:
- Two of the most improbable stretch runs ever, culminating in The Best Day in Baseball History.
- Arguably the best World Series game ever last night.
- One of the weirdest World Series mistakes ever. To the legends of Buckner's Error, Mickey Owen's Passed Ball, Don Denkinger's Blown Call, and Darren Baker's Near-Death Experience, you can now add Tony La Russa's Long-Distance Underwater Telephone Call. (Am I missing any?)
- A seventh game of the World Series, the first since, um, well, a certain year that eludes me for some reason... in any case a rare and lovely thing for baseball fans.
- A manager and two front-office executives all traded for players.
- I would list the implosion of the Los Angeles Dodgers here, but a) that's not very objective, and b) the near-murder of Bryan Stow is intertwined with the Dodgers' miserable situation. I would much prefer a healthy Stow and a less-embattled Dodger franchise.
Some will surely call 1998 one of the best in baseball history, what with the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase that brought fans back to the game after the 1994 strike. Others prefer to mark the year with an asterisk in the shape of a syringe. Putting aside the performance enhancements at work that year, the last two months of team drama -- and by extension, fan and city and regional drama -- easily trumps the mother of all home run chases.
Happy Game Seven, everyone!
- Two of the most improbable stretch runs ever, culminating in The Best Day in Baseball History.
- Arguably the best World Series game ever last night.
- One of the weirdest World Series mistakes ever. To the legends of Buckner's Error, Mickey Owen's Passed Ball, Don Denkinger's Blown Call, and Darren Baker's Near-Death Experience, you can now add Tony La Russa's Long-Distance Underwater Telephone Call. (Am I missing any?)
- A seventh game of the World Series, the first since, um, well, a certain year that eludes me for some reason... in any case a rare and lovely thing for baseball fans.
- A manager and two front-office executives all traded for players.
- I would list the implosion of the Los Angeles Dodgers here, but a) that's not very objective, and b) the near-murder of Bryan Stow is intertwined with the Dodgers' miserable situation. I would much prefer a healthy Stow and a less-embattled Dodger franchise.
Some will surely call 1998 one of the best in baseball history, what with the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase that brought fans back to the game after the 1994 strike. Others prefer to mark the year with an asterisk in the shape of a syringe. Putting aside the performance enhancements at work that year, the last two months of team drama -- and by extension, fan and city and regional drama -- easily trumps the mother of all home run chases.
Happy Game Seven, everyone!
