I remember falling in love with baseball back in 1993. That year, the Philadelphia Phillies turned the baseball world nearly upside down with their incredible NL East championship run. I distinctly remember the NLCS against those hated Atlanta Braves, with six emotionally taut games, the final out coming when Bill Pecota whiffed and Mitch Williams leaped, pumping his victorious fist.
Throughout the postseason against the Braves and Blue Jays, I would hold a bat when the Phillies came to hit, my glove when they went on defense. I was hoping that would somehow translate to success for the Phillies. Indeed, not long after my mother made me put them away, Joe Carter smashed that World Series-winning homerun right inside the left field line.
That was the good old days. In the early 1990's, it seemed like almost every year a team would come out of nowhere to end up in the World Series. It was the Atlanta Braves and the Minnesota Twins in 1991, those darn Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and my beloved Phillies in 1993.
Ever since, it seems much of the World Series' aura has diminished. Two of the four remaining teams in this year's playoffs, the Braves and the New York Yankees, are to blame. If they both advance to this year's Series, I won't watch and won't care who wins.
It seems like it's a Braves-Yankees series every year. The Yankees have won four of the last five championships, while the Braves have been in five of the last ten, winning once. Who needs to see these teams duke it out again? Who needs to see just one of these teams attempt to hoist the trophy?
I want a World Series with some real drama, or at least some semblance to it. Mariners-Diamondbacks will have to suffice for this year, though I'd rather see the Phillies against the young arms of the Oakland A's. My ultimate dream matchup would be Cubs-Red Sox to see which Curse would die first — the Bambino's or Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance's.
What I don't want to see is Paul Bako, B.J. Surhoff and Julio Franco go against Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez. That sounds like Snorefest 2001 not the grandeur that should be a World Series.
What's made the Super Bowl great the past few years is the surprise element. Teams, who the season before were losing in obscurity, have come up and won the Lombardi Trophy against all conceivable odds. Remember the 2000 showcase between the St. Louis Rams and the Tennessee Titans, and you get my point.
The current stretch of World Series has become like the Super Bowls of the early 1990's. It seems like the same two combatants every year — in football, it was the Buffalo Bills and the Dallas Cowboys. There was a reason the game was called the Super Bore.
Now in baseball we have the Braves and Yankees. Wake me when it's over.
Maybe the one reason to root for a Braves-Yankees showdown, as one of my colleagues pointed out a few weeks ago, is the collective bargaining agreement expiring after the season. Hopefully, the greedy gurus behind the Players Association and the owners will try and broker a deal that will make the playing field more level for all. I'm talking minimum salary bases (say $40 million per team) and salary caps. Scrap a team or two bent on not being competitive (the clock's ticking, Montreal) and shuffle some teams to more lucrative markets.
Those changes may not be the cure-all for American's pastime. I'm no Greenspan. Maybe even with those changes it'll be Braves-Yankees next year.
But at least with those alterations there would be more competition in the way as other teams would benefit and become stronger. The haves in baseball would no longer be able to slap on Band-Aids and duct tape to repair their teams at the expense of the have-nots, as both teams have done over the years.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping for that M's-D'backs match-up. That'd be Ichiro versus the Big Unit, Luis "Going Going" Gonzalez against Freddy Garcia, Curt Schilling's pure gas against my hometown boy Jamie Moyer's flutterballs.
Most of all, it won't be another Braves-Yankees showdown with the victor yawning at the end.
