Yes, Blue Monday!! I was a huge Dodgers fan as a kid and they are still my favourite NL team. We watched this game as an entire junior high in the gym. I knew better than to cheer the out loud when Monday homered but I floated home from school that day!!
I felt a fever coming on (hehe) so had to miss school that day to watch the game. memories not as fond as yours
I can’t cheer for the Yankees no matter who they are playing.
Crazy this is the most common playoff matchup ever but the first in my lifetime. Will take like another 20 years of inter league play before the Yankees and Dodgers regular season matchups eclipse their playoff ones.
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I strangely don’t hate the Yankees. I don’t like Cole and I don’t like their fans very much but at the start of the season I didn’t like the overspending to a championship by LA. They simply outyankeed the Yanks. So I guess I want a poor showing by their top guys more than anything.
The Yankees are the number two spending team behind the Mets at a staggering $276mil. LA ****ed around with Ohtani's salary, which really puts them number two in buying a championship. But to say it like the Yankees aren't also attempting to buy a championship is hilarious. MLB is ****ed in terms of payroll. I'd love to watch baseball with a hard salary cap like the NHL. This is just getting stupid.
And even more so when the media and fans are fawning, going "this is a dream match up!!!!!" and "the storylines in this championship are crazy!!!!". The ****ing storylines?! You mean, two teams spend an absolutely ridiculous amount of money in attempt to purchase an MLB championship? Yeah, really cool, really insane how it magically came down to this.
Two teams bankrolled a lot, but lets see whose ownership bankroll comes out on top. The bottom FIFTEEN teams in MLB are around the same payroll as the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies and Padres.
I get the distinct sense that jayswin is not a huge fan of this matchup. I'm curious if he'd be raging out as much if those plucky, nearly on welfare Jays and their $220 million payroll were in the World Series right now. Methinks not.
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I get the distinct sense that jayswin is not a huge fan of this matchup. I'm curious if he'd be raging out as much if those plucky, nearly on welfare Jays and their $220 million payroll were in the World Series right now. Methinks not.
Indeed. I think this will be a great World Series and I'm interested in watching it. Rangers/Diamondbacks this isn't. You have the two best players in the game playing in a winner take all showdown. That's exciting, and it's more interesting to have Ohtani on the Dodgers than it was to have him back in Japan after the Angels got eliminated every year.
But he's also correct that baseball needs to have more competitive balance. I actually think they need a floor more than a cap. No trading draft picks, plus pre-arb/arb contract structure means that poor teams can get at least some decent players at low prices. If they had a bigger incentive to sign their own FAs (to get to a higher floor) I think that would largely solve the problem.
I think they should add a competitive balance tax at the bottom as well. Eg, if you don't spend 1/2 the tax limit (ie 1/2 of $237 MM is $118.5 MM) you don't qualify for the tax transfers from the rich teams. Or you pay 25% of every dollar you're under back into the pot, something like that. That would have affected 10 teams this year.
It's stupid having teams like the Pirates run just to collect money from the rich teams without ever being competitive. It's bad for their fans and its bad for the sport.
That's not to say you can't be competitive at lower payrolls (eg the Tigers this year are well under that threshold, and the Rays never seem to spend money but mostly are good). But pushing the teams that are well managed but have low payrolls to spend that extra $30-40 MM means that they can keep a few home grown guys into FA (or offer them the Ronald Acuna Jr style long term contract in arb/pre-arb).
People always claim they want "parity" or whatever, but no one watches two teams who you simply shrug your shoulders at. Being indifferent about who wins is boring. That most of us want both these teams to lose is in some ways like the dream, either way we get to laugh at someone.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
People always claim they want "parity" or whatever, but no one watches two teams who you simply shrug your shoulders at. Being indifferent about who wins is boring. That most of us want both these teams to lose is in some ways like the dream, either way we get to laugh at someone.
I think it would be good for the long term fan base for all the teams to have a realistic shot at competing at least some of the time.
Having the Yankees be the team you either love or love to hate is great.
But if you're a young baseball fan from Pittsburg I can imagine deciding to follow the NFL instead, because the Pirates as currently managed will never amount to anything. I mean, Paul Skenes and O'Neil Cruz on pre-arb is a great asset - even judicious spending could turn that into a contender, but the Pirates are managed for profits and winning doesn't improve your share of MLB transfers.
The NFL offers the illusion of parity, but there's always 4-6 teams that are so much better run than everyone else that they generally dominate. It's just the NFL offers hope that the MLB never really can. Washington fans were utterly hopeless two years ago with Snyder and Rivera, and now they can dream big. In the MLB it just doesn't happen, or rarely does. Even when the Astros tanked hard it took 4-6 years before that bore fruit.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
The NFL offers the illusion of parity, but there's always 4-6 teams that are so much better run than everyone else that they generally dominate. It's just the NFL offers hope that the MLB never really can. Washington fans were utterly hopeless two years ago with Snyder and Rivera, and now they can dream big. In the MLB it just doesn't happen, or rarely does. Even when the Astros tanked hard it took 4-6 years before that bore fruit.
In the short run that's true - the powerhouse teams can't be caught.
But over the course of a fans life you can expect to see your team be a powerhouse as well even if theyre a small market. See: Chiefs, Kansas City.
I think that's quite a bit less likely in baseball, and while midmarket teams do have success it's less likely and less sustained, imo.
The franchise tag plays a huge role of course. Ravens let Lamar get to the end of his contract, but effectively held all the cards on whether he could leave. If the Angels could have franchised Ohtani they at least could have got a huge haul of picks and prospects instead of a comp pick that might not even be a first rounder. Baseball does have arb, which helps a little, but ultimately players can just refuse to sign long term and force their way to market. NFL has a better system to protect teams with their top players.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
injuries play a bit part in the NFL, one team falls one year it opens the door for their rival, in that one year. Also, 17 game schedule compared to 162
however, the baseball playoffs make for more randomness than the NFL's due to pitchers. Your 4 good starters can get you through 162 but can it win you that one big game at the end.
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