By John W. Lillpop
American baseball games are played for keeps beginning in April and continue through September each year.
After six grueling months of damn-near daily games (each team plays 162), eight teams, four from the American League and four from the National League, are allowed to play on into the month of October.
Finally, as the “post-season” progresses all but two teams, one from each league, advance to the Fall Classic, more modestly referred to as the World Series.
Eventually, one team emerges as World Series champion sometime in November.
On this particular morning, the combatants in the Post-season are known and include New York, Detroit, Tampa, and Texas in the American league and Arizona, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Philadelphia in the National.
Thus begins the ‘torture run’ to glory for the ball players and their ardent fans in these cities.
The end of the regular season yesterday was anything but regular. The Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox clubs both went into September with huge leads in their quest for “Wild Card” slots. Both seemed all but certain to qualify for the post-season.
But this is baseball, where the bizarre, unexpected, and crazy is always possible.
For Atlanta and Boston fans, the “torture” ended with their teams left in lurch, forced to wait until next year!
The amazing thing about baseball is that after all those months and games, fans retain the ability to go into hysterical joy or suicidal despair, based on the doings of millionaire athletes playing a kid’s game.
Why should Atlanta fans be so upset about the collapse of the spoiled millionaires who play ball for their town, but whom rarely live in said town or have any emotional connection thereto, save the millions of dollars that flow into their greedy palms?
Likewise for Boston. What the hell difference does it really make that the team fell out of the playoffs by losing to the lowly Baltimore Orioles?
So big deal that the hated New York Yankees collapsed in the last two innings of its game against Tampa Bay! Who the hell would believe that the Yankees would deliberately go belly-up against Tampa simply to knock Boston out of the post-season?
But it DOES matter, in a huge way to the fans! Which is why unbridled joy will happen in St. Louis and Tampa, while the die-hard blokes in Atlanta and Boston are on suicide watch for the next day or so!
