The Phillies and the Padres fought the instinct to kick me out of bed this morning, which I appreciate. Strange as it is, they became my bedfellows on Saturday, the day I resumed an ability to watch baseball and not hate everything about it. Postseason will make people otherwise at odds find common cause.
Our cause (mine, certainly) was theirs, if only out of spite for the Braves and the Dodgers. I’m lousy with spite. No, I’m terrific with spite. That Phillies fans wish a pox on our house doesn’t stop me from having wished them the best of luck with heaping a bigger pox on the Braves’ house. I’ll chance a crimson shade of smug oozing into Citi Field next summer. The Phillies may be the Phillies, but the Braves are the Braves.
Correction: the Braves were [1] the Braves. Now they’re as done as we are. Well done. Let’s check the final, FINAL records of the top two finishers from the now defunct, incredibly irrelevant 2022 regular season in the National League East, postseason results included for the sake of spite:
New York Mets 102-63
Atlanta Braves 102-64
What’s that? It doesn’t work that way? It doesn’t work at all, said the maintenance staff at Citi Field regarding the postseason bells and whistles that went ringless and silent. When it comes to These Mets [2], I’ll take what I can get. What I got was Those Braves going home.
Taken!
As for the Padres, who were rude visitors to Flushing what seems like a month ago, I’ll share the spiritual bed with them a little longer, having climbed in uninvited. Maybe they’re a team of destiny, in which case, who were our presumptuous 101-game winners to have stood in their way? When the Pads were at Dodger Stadium, they wore the same road uniforms in which they did their dastardly deed to the Mets. Too soon. Then they went home, put on their whites and browns and yellows for the adoring home folks who hadn’t had a chance to adore them in person in any October since 2006, and I chose to see them in a different light: lovable underdog with a slingshot in their back pocket. Down goes Goliath! [3] While I know I have every reason to hate the Braves due to divisional warfare, I realize I hate the geographically distant Dodgers solely on merit. I’ve looked at their haughty asses in the postseason every postseason for a solid decade. They and their 111 wins can take a seat for the duration. They can sit a row ahead of us if it makes them feel any more vindicated.
Crazy system, huh? The four National League teams with the most wins (remember the Cardinals?) will join the nine National League teams who didn’t make the playoffs in not playing for the pennant. San Diego of the 89 wins and Philadelphia of the 87 wins now vie for the flag in a triumph of the pretty good who got very hot. If MLB tugs uncomfortably at its collar at the optics, it should rethink inviting 5-seeds and 6-seeds to its medieval fair. The Padres and Phillies didn’t know they were supposed to be jousting fodder. But they optimized their opportunities. I wouldn’t have said it a week ago, but good for them.
Over in the American League, sorry to Seattle, who did everything they could do across three games except keep the Astros off the board at the end of Game One and put themselves on the board for eighteen innings [4] in Game Three (with a standard-issue loss tucked into Game Two). There’s been an epidemic of “the last time the Mariners were in the playoffs, gas was 29 cents a gallon and Rudolph Valentino was cinema’s reigning heartthrob” contextualization, but a dearth of postseason participation for 21 years speaks for itself. Now it doesn’t speak at all. Glad for the M’s fans who experienced their rebirth, no matter how cruelly the candles on their cake were snuffed.
Oh, and go Cleveland! [5]