2018 World Series

Red Sox over Dodgers in 5

If you don't like baseball, you'll never get how much tension and drama the game creates--even when nothing is happening! If you don't like baseball, you just see nothing; but baseball lovers came away from this World Series with a new admiration of Nathan Eovaldi, a guy that expertly did almost nothing for 9 full innings, and it was a joy to watch (even though he ended up taking the loss).

I thought the Sox's advantage was the weird dimensions of Fenway Park and the frigid temps of New England in October. So when they took the first two games at home I didn't chalk it up to the Sox being wildly better than the Dodgers. Indeed, I was actually pretty impressed with how the Dodgers played in those first two games and thought they had a good chance to sweep the LA games and head back to Fenway looking to close out the Sox (though even then I still would've liked the Red Sox chances of taking the final two games). And when Game Three went an epic 18 innings (normally I pay little/no attention to TV commentators but on this night I kinda pitied how fucking tired they must be just sitting in the same chairs for all that time), I thought it portended well for the Dodgers. Not unlike the NLCS when an extra inning game warped the Brewer bullpen, I thought the Sox that would pay the price for the unexpected time on the field. Nope, not so much. It was the Dodger bullpen that couldn't get it together in the next coupla games.

I'm cool with Steve Pearce being the MVP, he had some big hits and was definitely a major contributor. But really I thought the Sox lineup all played pretty good but not great, including Pearce. I would've gone with David Price as MVP, I just thought his Series was great, he did everything that needed to be done despite his poor playoff history and rocky time in Boston. And given that in the clinching game, he gave up a homer on the first pitch...and then nothing after that...was something special and should've been rewarded. Also, symbolically Price was the guy that has been there the whole time and endured a lot of criticism who shook off his doubts and performed at a high level when no one thought he could, whereas Pearce is a journeyman who just joined the team, might not be back next year. Pearce is a fine choice but I think Price was the better story and I'm surprised the voters missed that.

Obviously the Red Sox were the best team in baseball this year. With 108 regular season wins and relatively easy victories over the Yankees, Astros and Dodgers (*), it seems like the discussion will soon turn to whether this team is one of the best teams ever. I'm not in on that. This team was good but their pitching was hardly one of the greats of all time and the lineup struck me as good but not great, good at getting timely hitting (dare I say 'clutch'?) but not overpowering or unbeatable. This team just had the ability to outlast their opponents. Huzzah for the Red Sox. They won it all and they deserved it. And I enjoyed it every step of the way because I love good baseball and this was good baseball.


(*) The Red Sox became the first team ever to defeat both of the prior World Series participants to win the championship. Weird, that doesn't seem like it would be that uncommon.