2020 Might Suck, But This Year’s World Series Will Be Great

The sports culture is weird—especially baseball. Stats and facts dominate the sport. Everyone wants to know the first time some dude tossed a no-hitter after swallowing a handful of speed pills or when four players all wearing black pants hit sacrifice flies in a row. Nerds will sit in the stands penciling in every little strike pitch and ball, for no reason other than pure enjoyment. Over on the gridiron, most folks are trying to not spill Miller Lite on one another in between telling one another that everything about them, including their mothers, are garbage. But, hey, football probably won’t even happen this year, so whatever.

The details of baseball tend to overshadow the actual performance on the field sometimes. There are multiple arguable points in any given season. Occasionally, some situations defy context and challenge historical norms to judge them by – see: Houston Astros beating garbage cans and shit to cheat their way into holding the World Series trophy. This argument is a hard roll because despite some egregious stuff going on, many of those players like Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, and the whole pitching staff played their asses off. Carlos Beltran and Joey Cora found a way to get the edge, and they took it. People want to slap an asterisk next to the win, so argue that in a comments section. 2020 is a different animal.

When it comes to the horror show that is 2020, we’re cruising through a shortened baseball season whittled down to 60 games with some different rule changes to boot, but really, is it so bad?

Typically, the baseball season is 162 games long. A lot of those games are in the cold, wet ass spring. The part of the year when people chide, “those games don’t matter,” and then everyone is bitching about wishing they had a few more key wins on the scorecard come playoff time. But this year we’ve trimmed the fat. Baseball teams capable of staying hot can do so and coast into an expanded playoff system with two wild card teams, which will make for a much more dramatic postseason. Why wouldn’t anyone want to see new teams in the mix rather than the typical big spenders like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Cardinals? This year, we’re seeing teams like the Padres, Athletics, and White Sox all sneak into the party. There’s a real possibility of a Cubs and White Sox World Series for the first time in any of our lives.

While people complain about some purity of the game, fuck that. The players are psyched because for them, every play, pitch, and inning matters this season. One hot streak could change the entire playoff outlook. If anything, this baseball season feels more like football where everyone’s got a chance to make some noise. Trades matter more than ever, the same with carrying more pitchers, and now with the new three minimum batter rule, we’re seeing one batter specialists either thrive or get smoked. How is that not exciting? No one is phoning it in if they’ve got a snowball’s chance to make it into October.

And then there are all of the disruptions. We’re living through a pandemic. Players are wearing masks. There are no fans in the stands, but instead cardboard cutouts and pumped in crowd noise. There’s a universal DH, which is way better than the automatic when the pitcher comes to bat. There aren’t the sights and smells of hot dogs, peanuts, and beer. Instead, there are new stories of virus outbreaks, random player testing, social issues aplenty, and now a World Series to now be played in “the sports bubble” of Arlington, Texas. Teams can’t even win in their hometown.

Player’s lockers are six feet apart, and they have to keep their distance in training sessions. There’s no spitting seeds, saliva, or big wads of bubblegum. Players aren’t allowed to chest bump, and there are no media allowed in the clubhouse for droll interviews, which is probably a good thing, anyhow. I mean, how many ways can you surmise your thought process on making a fantastic catch? These players are multi-millionaires, it’s why they got the job in the first place. But a lot of these players are so rooted in routine and superstition. You have to imagine the lack of familiarity in their heads. Have you ever paid attention to how many times a player adjusts his gloves during an at-bat?

This is a significant disruption. These guys aren’t skating. They’re enduring. Players will test positive. Some teams will miss games because of that, which is an X-factor. It’s a different ballgame, literally. There’s no going out after a hard-fought win, and these guys aren’t getting to see their families. There’s an increased pressure to be great. People will talk about this season for generations to come.

Just because it’s a shorter season doesn’t mean these teams aren’t playing their best baseball. There’s still a trophy to be held and rings to show off hard work. This is a competition. And these teams don’t deserve the asterisk. They should be celebrated for playing the game despite a world gone insane.