November Series?
I am reminded of a few weeks ago a blog post I made about Frank Deford saying that that the slide into fall was such a let down for sports. His comment was something about football had not really gotten started and baseball was pretty much wrapped up. And yet, where are now? Is it the midpoint of the football season? And we are well into November and we are still playing the World Series?
I will come back to that in second. We had to get to midway through the series before I ever actually decided who I would root for in this fall classic series. At my core I am 100% Cincinnati Reds fan and have been since back in the 1970′s as a kid. You may recall a few years there in the middle and end of that decade where there was this thing called the “Big Red Machine.” So yes, I always root for them and was actually happy at the beginning of the season when they were actually a few games above the .500 mark. That did last beyond the all-star break though.
But I digress. My point is, outside of cheering on my favorite team I tend to have a couple of trends. I can support anyone that with a win helps the Reds, though that has not been an issue for several years now. Next is I will always support whoever is playing the Yankees, even it is the Red Sox. Of course somewhere very close to that is cheer for whoever is playing the Phillies. I am not sure I can place this one, other then there was some big time years of Reds versus Phillies, but I think more then anything is the number of players the Phillies picked up from the Reds at various times. Oddly though, I can occasionally be happy to see a Dodgers club take a win and there was a much greater rivalry there as far as the Reds are concerned.
Anyway, I was leaning toward the Phillies to begin, being the National League team was given them a slight nod despite it all. And that first rule of can NOT support the Yankees. As they quickly became an underdog that made it easy to choose them. And the scrappy get back into it last night made it really hard to not take up the cause totally.
Enough of that though. Why the heck a World Series so late? They did not ad games to the season, as a matter of fact they have not done that in awhile. Nor did extra weeks get added with a strike or even during the all-star break. So what the heck is going on? I really do not know. I will say that I believe this is the first time it has even stretched into the month of November. If it has before, I missed it.
Regardless though, I am most frustrated with all the sports. They are seeming to always stretch out a game or two. And before you know it what used to be the clearly defined season of certain sports is not longer applicable at all. Clearly football should be fall into winter and it seems to start in summer. The NBA could probably add a handful of games and play year around, or so it seems to me. And now it seems the boys of summer will have to be called the boys of fall as well.
