Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie 2021: "ACTIVATE JUJU!...ENGAGE!"

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: “ACTIVATE JUJU!... ENGAGE!”

No more messin’ around with no more Wild Cards. It’s time to get serious. We now enter phase two of the 2021 Playoffs, when the contenders separate themselves into contenders or pretenders. These are the fateful five game playoffs. The divisional champ with the best record overall plays the winner of the Wild Card game and is assumed to have an edge since they have been able to line up their pitching staff for the long Playoff road ahead.

Of course this advantage is usually countermanded by taking five days off to cool down the offense and any momentum they may have had.

The AL participants this year are the Division winner Tampa Bay and Wild Card winner Boston... still flushed with victory goose pimples from defeating their nemesis, the Yankees. (Who are probably still suffering PTSD from seeing Aaron Judge being sent home to his death on a single off the wall by Stanton; the third base coach Nevin whirling his arm to beckon him disastrously onto the Siren rocks of the catcher’s mitt, filled with a relayed baseball inscribed “Greetings from Xander...Welcome Home!” )

The other game tonight (Thursday Oct.7) is between the Central Division champion Chicago White Sox and the Western Division leading Houston Astros. These teams are pretty evenly matched. They each feature:

1/ a strong offense with lots and lots of power.

2/spectacular defenses

3/lots of fragile and/or psychotic pitchers

They also have managers who take turns being Ahab or Moby Dick every other decade. Tony LaRussa is managing the White Sox, just like he did forty-odd years ago. Dusty Baker came back from retirement to manage the Astros. These guys have managed against each other in 208 games and have each won 104. They are in their seventies now and they make the game of baseball much more interesting with their august presence.

I give the Astros the edge in this series. They’ve been to see the elephant often in the last few years and I think they’ll handle the hype better. Also, their hitting stars include crafty vets like Altuve, Gurriel, Brantley and Bregman to help young guns Tucker and Yordan Alvarez stay focused. They also have home field advantage in this series.

The Sox have vet Jose Abreu to lead but their young guys Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez have to get hot for them to stay with Houston. Also, two of their top pitchers have health issues. Lance Lynn, their first game starter, was on the injured list with a bad right knee in September. No-hit fireballer Carlos Rondon has had arm problems lately.

As far as the Bosox and Rays? Boston hasn’t been able to stay with Tampa this year. The Rays bullpen is strong and they use it wisely. The Red Sox will need Nate Eovaldi to be Madison Bumgarner circa 2014 to beat the Rays. And Nate doesn’t pitch again until Sunday.

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Playoffs? Who said anything about Playoffs?

The first playoffs to break a regular season tie and decide the World Series participant was in 1946. The thing to remember about playoffs is that in the National League the Dodgers have been in all of them...at least before the Wild Card era.

I know you remember 1951 and “The Shot Heard Round the World.” It was a three game decider and the Giants’ Bobby Thompson decided it with one of the most famous walk-off home runs of all time. Dodgers lose. Unlucky Dodger hurler Ralph Branca crying on the dugout steps.

But the Dodgers were back in 1959...this time representing Los Angeles... to take two games against the defending pennant winner Milwaukee Braves and win the World Series over Chicago’s White Sox that year. Then the now San Francisco Giants won a classic two out of three against L.A. in 1962. The Dodgers lost again in 1980 when the Astros won a one game playoff after the Dodgers had swept them in four straight at Chavez Ravine to end the season tied.

So, the Dodgeheads have suffered mostly a grim fate in these games. Just as they did in the very first playoff in 1946, when the St. Louis Cardinals came from behind to tie the Brooklyns on the next to last day of the season. Then both teams lost their finales.

St. Louis won the first game at home when Musial tripled in the eighth and Joe Garagiola knocked him in with his third hit of the game. Cardinal starter Howie Pollet pitched with a pulled muscle in his side and went 9 gutsy innings to win 4-2. The Dodger losing pitcher? Ralph Branca...Destiny’s Darling.

At this point, the Dodgers pitching staff was in shreds. Ebbets Field couldn’t save them. St. Louis got 3 triples and 2 doubles and won going away 8-3 in Game 2. The Dodgers went home and the Cardinals played an epic series with the Boston Red Sox, decided by Enos Slaughter’s famous “Mad Dash” to score from first on a double by Harry (“The Hat”) Walker.

An interesting footnote in the “For want of a nail” department:

The Red Sox complained to the Commissioner about the best of three playoff format making the Boston team sit around waiting to play the winner in the 1946 Series. They had to schedule an exhibition game just to keep their players tuned. Ted Williams played the outfield in this game and banged into the outfield wall, hurting his elbow. The Bostonians blamed this injury on The Kid’s 5 for 25 performance in the Classic. All singles including one bunt laid down against the shift by a wounded Splinter. The Red Sox brass demanded a change to a one game playoff for future tie breakers. The American League agreed and voted yes. The Senior Circuit kept their best of three format so they could continue to torture the Dodgers.

Two years later, in 1948, the American League played their first ever tie breaker series when the Cleveland Indians tied up the Red Sox and went to Fenway for the now one-game playoff. Knuckle Baller Gene Bearden pitched a complete game for the Tribe and player/manager Lou Boudreau went 4 for 4 with 2 homers over the monster. The Clevelanders won 8 to 3.

Ted Williams went 1 for 4 with a single and dropped a fly in the outfield for an error that cost them a run. Maybe if the Sox were in a best of 3 format, they might have come back and won. Maybe Ted would have redeemed himself somehow. But that AL format change after the 1946 series killed that option and Ted got to play in only one World Series in his career, and had to play it with a bad elbow.

The Red Sox got beat by the Yankees on the last day of 1949 and they never got close again.

So the consequences of the 1946 Playoffs reverberated in the career of one of baseball’s greatest players.

But don’t cry for Ted; Stan Musial never played in another World Series after 1946 either!