I’ll never be able to truly root for the Dodgers, but I will at least wish them successful hunting.
It is with great regret that I inform you that the World Series begins tonight. Perhaps it’s a joyful moment for you – you know, if there’s something wrong with you – but as for me, I am facing the proverbial nightmare scenario as a fan: Dodgers versus Canadians. Would you prefer hemlock or strychnine?
Let me stipulate something up front: I consider the Los Angeles Dodgers to be either an actual terrorist regime or its nearest baseball equivalent. Their absolute dominance of the game over the last few years — and their ability to acquire the world’s best talents at the most premium prices — makes them almost perfect as baseball villains: legitimately great and eminently loathable. (Ironically, this makes them the new Yankees.) Some teams ride a core of young homegrown talent to make a legendary postseason run, but the Dodgers have joylessly steamrolled their way to two consecutive World Series appearances, and I assume they’ll just go out this offseason and purchase whatever pieces they need to get them to a third next year.
So I’d love a scrappy underdog to root for. But not like this. I cannot bring myself to root for the Toronto Blue Jays. This is for two reasons: First, because I am an American and regard the Blue Jays’ back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993 as an appalling affront to our national pride. (The United States, to its credit, refused to take this attack sitting down: We retaliated immediately by stealing the Stanley Cup in 1994 and do not plan on returning it any time soon.)
The second reason I cannot root for the Toronto Blue Jays is because I am an ancestral fan of the Seattle Mariners. Understand what that means after the horrors of this postseason: I now hate the Blue Jays with a positively Balkan passion, for ruining both the season as well as my teeth, which may fall out from having been ground into cracked shards during this year’s heartbreaking ALCS. For one brief shining moment it seemed like the Mariners — the only team in Major League Baseball never to have made it to a World Series — would be allowed to enter the Promised Land. But the vision was a cruel mirage, and once again the M’s crumbled to ashes at the moment it seemed like they might be a team of destiny.
So no, I will not be backing these foreign invaders, who savagely burned my village before arriving in Chavez Ravine to grapple for the khan’s crown. And yet I cannot root for the Dodgers either. I find it hard to even conceive of two separate fan bases I more wish to see disappointed.
Instead, I shall root for excellence. If the Dodgers are destined to repeat as World Series champions, then at least let them be brutal about it. Goliath, go do your thing! Many would argue that Shohei Ohtani gave the single most impressive single-game performance in baseball history in Game 4 of the NLCS. Now let’s see him hit those three dingers while tossing a perfect 9. (I wouldn’t put it past him; Ohtani may be getting paid more money on his contract than most human beings can even physically conceive of, but he also has earned it.)
I’ll never be able to truly root for the Dodgers, but since America has chosen to field a well-paid mercenary army to fight its sports battles against Canada, I will at least wish them successful hunting. A trophy seems likely in their future.