Baseball's Fall Classic begins this week, pitting the American League champion Texas Rangers against the National League champion San Francisco Giants. Both teams knocked off the reigning champions in their respective leagues, the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies, to reach the World Series.
I can only assume that when Giants closer Brian Wilson caught Ryan Howard looking for the final out of the NLCS, sending the Giants to the World Series for the first time since 2001, all of the executives at FOX Network collectively banged their heads against the wall. The reason for their headache was the fact that the two teams playing for baseball's title would not be coming from one of the country's large TV markets. No Yankees? No Phillies? Panic time ratings-wise for the television execs.
Nothing is more important in sports today than TV ratings and making money, but these two teams facing off in the World Series is exactly what baseball needs.
As my colleague Max Sternberg pointed out in his column a couple weeks ago, baseball has struggled for a long time when it comes to parity in MLB. Having the Phillies in the World Series for the third straight year, or the Yankees in it for a second, would have validated fans' frustration yet again.
Most baseball fans feel that even if their favorite teams have a good year and makes the playoffs, they don't have a legitimate hope of winning it all if a team like the Yankees, Red Sox or Phillies stand in their way. Those teams are the only actual contenders once the calendar flips to October.
When it is the same teams competing for October glory every year, those teams' large fan bases may be good for TV ratings, but it isn't good for the growth of the game of baseball.
But the results of this year's postseason gives hope to future little guys. The Davids defeated the Goliaths during this postseason.
The Rangers and Giants, however, took two very different paths to get to this year's Fall Classic.
Coming into this postseason, the Texas Rangers had never won a postseason series. They hadn't made an appearance in October since 1999, when they were swept by, you guessed it, the New York Yankees. But they dominated the AL West this season, going 90-72 and winning the division by a comfortable nine-game margin over Oakland.
The Giants haven't won the World Series since they called the Polo Grounds home, and this year's Giants didn't even secure their spot in the postseason until the final game of the year. They were able to overcome the Padres' season -long stranglehold on the NL West to make their first postseason appearance since 2003 and make their first trip to the Fall Classic since they fell to the Angels in 2002.
A Rangers-Giants World Series is what the game of baseball needs, and what its fans deserve, whether anyone realizes it right now or not. It's a deviation from the norms of October, and that is definitely more exciting than watching the Yankees and Phillies go at it ever could be.
Texas and San Francisco are underdogs, and there is nothing America loves more than a good underdog story. The two teams are easy to cheer for: Josh Hamilton and his battle to erase his troubled past, the enigmatic shortstop Elvis Andrus or Cliff Lee and his continuing search for the ring he so rightly deserves.
The Giants are a team filled with other teams' castoffs and an ace pitcher who just might be under the influence on the mound. And who can't help cheer for a slugger nicknamed Kung-Fu Panda?
The Rangers and Giants took down the Goliaths of October baseball and that is what fans really care about. For fans of teams like the Minnesota Twins, Cincinnati Reds or Colorado Rockies it is great news. Twins fans have lost hope of ever beating the Yankees in the playoffs, but after watching the Rangers manhandle the Bronx Bombers in the ALCS, maybe the Yankees don't seem so invincible after all.
So while the higher-ups at the FOX Network pull their hair out over the fact that the teams playing in the World Series won't bring the ratings like the Yankees or Phillies would, I can rest easy knowing that the upcoming Rangers-Giants series will help baseball in the long run by giving the underdogs of the world legitimate hope in future postseasons. And to me, that is a worthwhile enough reason to tune in.
Would you rather just see the Yankees in the World Series every year? Can there really be two underdogs playing each other? E-mail Ryan your thoughts at: rmevans2@wisc.edu.
