This always has seemed semi-tacky. Team A gets to the championship series/game, and politicians who share a city or a state with that team … announce a “bet” with their opposite number from Team B on the outcome of the event. Always backing the home team, of course, usually boasting about them — but often […]

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Maybe I have been out of the U.S. too long. Or maybe this is just some collective American madness that feeds on itself and at the end of it … we all apparently hate Fox’s World Series broadcast voice Joe Buck. How do we know? Let’s start with the last-minute push, this week, to get […]

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The 2016 World Series is a mismatch. The much-beloved Chicago Cubs are just too good for the Cleveland Indians, and the series will be the sort of romp they should be able to celebrate in Wrigley Field, when this thing ends in Game 4 or (at most) 5. It must be assumed that planning for […]

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The Dodgers’ limp surrender to the Chicago Cubs tonight, allowing the Cubbies to reach the World Series for the first time since 1945, seems to call for a reassessment of the Los Angeles team’s priorities. What matters most to the people who run this club? Is it a championship? Or is it selling tickets and […]

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If Clayton Kershaw tomorrow can throw seven scoreless innings and allow two hits, as he did in his first go-round with the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series … I think it would be time to say “all is forgiven”. All is forgiven for the rocky outings in previous NLCS and postseason appearances. […]

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As Game 4 of the National League Championship Series began, the Chicago Cubs were reeling, after being shut out twice in succession by the Dodgers. Three innings into the game, the Cubs scoreless streak had reached 21 innings, as rookie Dodgers rookie left-hander Julio Urias looked formidable. Urias should have had a lead, but his […]

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I watched the Dodgers’ National League Championship Series game with the Cubs that ended early this morning, and I was struck by two things I saw in the crowd. –Even this late in the season (but not at all that late on a Los Angeles night), Dodgers fans are going to leave early in an […]

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Most Los Angeles Dodgers fans were well aware that the man typically referred to as the greatest pitcher in the game — Clayton Kershaw — had not been able to translate his regular-season successes. Those led to three Cy Young awards (2011, 2013, 2014), given to the man considered the best pitcher in his league. […]

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The Cleveland Indians have been not-winning things for a long time. No World Series championships since 1948. Last appeared in a World Series in 1997 and lost Game 7 in excruciating fashion. But we must thank them for an important something already this October:

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I assumed I would be asleep when the Dodgers and Washington Nationals completed Game 5 — as well as their National Division Series. The game began at 8:08 p.m. (EDT), and three-plus hours had elapsed by the time I woke in France, at about 5:15 a.m. (Friday morning). As I was booting up the laptop […]

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