Rays vs. Phils

You know that television executives from coast to coast were crying into their paschima scarves and silk ties when the Dodgers fell to the Phils in the National League and the Bosox dropped the seventh game of the American League Championship, setting up this year’s World Series between perennial doormats the Tampa Bay “Don’t Call Me Devil” Rays and the only team in professional sports to lose 10,000 games in their history, the Philadelphia “Pass Me Another Cheesesteak” Phillies.

No doubt a Boston-Los Angeles Fall Classic offered the potential for much more entertaining broadcast drama, with Manny Ramirez returning to Fenway and Tommy Lasorda popping up out of the stands at Chavez Ravine whenever the home team staged a rally, but, as a matter of fact, based on their performances in the playoffs, it’s pretty clear that Tampa Bay and Philadelphia had the superior teams.

So good on them.

I find it hard to get very excited about either team; as a Western Pennsylvanian by birth, I’ve always despised the Pittsburgh Pirate’s cross-state rivals and that animus was only exacerbated during the 1980s, when, as a die-hard Dodgers fan, I had to weather defeat in 1983 to a team that included the hated Mike Schmidt and his annoying sidekick Pete Rose.

And as for Tampa Bay, who dey?

Still, I’m going to rooting for the Florida team; I’ve enjoyed following the successes of their young players and I like that their manager, Joe Maddon, wears black hornrimmed glasses.

Plus, any team that eliminates the insufferable Red Sox and their equally annoying fans from the show gets my vote.

All this said, I probably won’t be following the Series very closely; certainly not as I’ve done in the past, like in 1979, when the Pirates won it all and I parked myself at this dive bar off Castro Street in San Francisco for every game, managing to make it sober to the end of two or three.