Game six of the World Series happened Wednesday night.
Boston could be celebrating its third World Series in ten seasons or preparing for a game seven against a very strong St. Louis squad.
The reason I don’t know what happened is that I didn’t watch it and I could
not
care less about the result.
Quite personally, I hope somehow, someway, neither team wins the World Series. My shared hatred for both teams is immeasurable, combining with both team’s recent successes and the media’s desire to push narratives to drive me away from the television during the Fall Classic.
It’s the Cardinals who “uphold tradition” in baseball, which is what
USA Today
baseball writer Bob Nightengale wrote during the National League Championship Series when St. Louis faced off against the raucous, fun-loving bunch from Los Angeles.
In Boston, there’s the idea that no one believed in the Red Sox since they were picked to miss the playoffs in many preseason prognostications. I guess the logic in Boston is that when you play the entire season and finish with the best record in a league, you’re an underdog in the playoffs.
But those aren’t the biggest reasons I’m not watching. My lack of viewership is centered around bitterness, sadness and hopelessness.
The Detroit Tigers are my favorite baseball team and probably the team I’m most passionate about when it comes to professional sports, collegiate sports and everything in between.
This was supposed to be the year. This was supposed to be the year that the Tigers put all the tools together and provided the city of Detroit with its first World Series title since 1984.
They had the perfect ingredients. Three pitchers at the top of the rotation in Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez, who are each capable of winning a Cy Young Award, a player in Miguel Cabrera that may very well win two consecutive Most Valuable Player awards and one of the most balanced and talented lineups in baseball.
Detroit was one of the favorites to get back to the World Series this year and avenge the embarrassing sweep in last season’s Fall Classic. After signing Torii Hunter in the offseason, the motto was “World Series or bust.”
That dream never came to fruition, with a disappointing exit in the American League Championship Series despite one of the most dominant starting pitching playoff performances in Tiger history.
Watching Shane Victorino hit what came to be a game-winning grand slam during the seventh inning of game six and the eventual on-field celebration afterwards, I felt an empty hole in the bottom of my stomach.
Magglio Ordonez’s walk-off home run in the 2006 ALCS that sent the Tigers to the World Series was one of the best moments of my life. I remember where I was, who I was with and even what I was eating.
Victorino’s home run gave me that exact opposite emotion. I watched all 162 regular season games over the course of six months and labored through every pitch of the postseason. All of a sudden, it was over.
Realizing how long I’d have to wait to see the Tigers get this close once again next season is a horrible, longing feeling that is part of what makes being a fan horrible.
Thus is why I’m not watching the World Series and trying to divorce myself from the sport for the next few weeks. The wound is too fresh.
ch203310@ohiou.edu
@c_hoppens
