The World Series does not consume the US as it once did. But baseball still offers a window on the best and the worst of AmericaBaseball has long seen itself as America’s game, a game as great-hearted, humble and fundamentally decent as America itself. And for the better part of the 20th-century, at least in terms of the game’s popularity, baseball was indeed America’s game, and its biggest stars were famous in a way that athletes simply aren’t famous anymore. Fans in the 1920s traveled hundreds of miles just to see Babe Ruth, and the New York Daily News hired a journalist to write about Ruth, and only Ruth, 365 days a year. The most famous players of later eras...
On Wednesday night, for the Cubs at least, the World Series ended in that rarest of things: an authentic, earned happy endingThere was a baseball game last night.There are three stories to tell about it, and they’re stacked on top of each other, tottering, each bigger than the last and relying on the one below it to make sense. The first story: the Cubs took a 6-3 lead into the eighth inning of Game 7 of the World Series, and Aroldis Chapman blew it. Then he won the game. Related: Chicago Cubs end most storied title drought in American sporting folklore | Bryan Armen Graham Related: Bill Murray basks in 'beautiful' victory as Obama invites Cubs to White House Continue...
No team has failed better over the last century but this extraordinary victory suggests the next World Series will not be far away for history’s glorious losers Baseball is a game of failures. A hitter with a .300 batting average, the traditional benchmark of a star player, fails seven times out of 10. Errors are given equal billing alongside runs and hits, a naked public accounting of imperfection consistent on scoreboards from Little League diamonds to major league stadiums. The game is a turn-based series of individual conflicts where mistakes are amplified. The difference between good and great, between winning and losing, exists in the management of the inevitable, incremental defeats that unlike other sports are not mere hazards of...
Will the Cubs end their famously long drought? On the other hand, will the Indians end their famously long drought? Surely the Cubs can’t be denied the championship. Going into the World Series, Chicago have the better starting rotation, the better lineup and the better closer. But does any of that matter? Especially when the manager in the other dugout has won two World Series and has been a master of manipulating match-ups throughout the postseason. Cleveland would be in a better position if they still had Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, who had helped carry them to the American League Central title. Instead they must try to tame the Cubs with only two certainties in their rotation: Corey Kluber...