World Series Talk

From: Alex Massie
To: Michael Brendan Dougherty, Tim Carney
Subject: The agony of choosing sides

No matter how many times you say "The Tampa Bay Rays are in the World Series," it still doesn't sound right. The name doesn't help. The Tampa Bay Rays. Roll that around your mouth. They sound as though they belong in a league with the Toledo Joes and the Charlestown Johns.

Despite a decade spent as a joke franchise, it's tough shaking the feeling that the Rays haven't paid their dues. Rather like the Florida Marlines before them (and the Colorado Rockies last season) they haven't quite earned their place in the Fall Classic. This is, doubtless, unfair to the Rays and their tiny band of followers, but there you have it. More than most sports, baseball bathes in nostalgia and no matter how much you may admire the Rays remarkable, improbable turnaround this season their presence in the Series isn't backed by any historical heft.

Seriously, wouldn't you rather have seen the Red Sox win the American League pennant?

Then again, my baseball loyalties lie with the Giants and the Yankees. The former on account of the Shot Heard Around the World, still the game's most famous home run and the only notable blow struck by a ballplayer born in Scotland; the latter since Yankee Stadium was where I first watched baseball.

That being so, the nightmare scenario this year was a Dodgers-Red Sox series. As in politics, so in baseball, it's not necessarily a question of who you support but who you most want to see lose that matters most. A Dodgers-Red Sox series would have been the Iran-Iraq War all over again: couldn't they both lose? Still, it would have been a better World Series had either LA or Boston made it into the second half of October. At least then there'd have been an obvious set of Bad Guys to root against.

So, somebody has to win. And if the Rays don't bring history to the table, does that compel one to endorse the Phillies? Not so fast, my friends! For a generation - or since the 76ers won their most recent NBA title in 1983 - the entire raison d'etre of Philadephia sport has been wrapped up in failure. The city is always the bridesmaid, never the bride herself. That's helped create a sporting culture in Philly that veers from rage to despair and back again.

Philly sports has become a kind of beery opera buffa. A nightmare for those trapped inside, perhaps, but entertaining to those looking in from outside. Philly fans are never better than when they're grotesque. Who does not chortle at the memory of them booing Santa Claus?

And since sport so often proves, like fox-hunting, the truth of the old adage that the chase is better than the kill, so those of us not condemned or blessed to be Philadelphians are consoled by the City of Brotherly Love's blue-collar rage and must ask ourselves if we really want it to be replaced by the sweet harmony of victory? Philly without despair won't be Philly as we know and love it.

That being the case, a Tampa victory can be construed as being akin to a shooting star: spectacular but fleeting. A Phillies triumph, however, would force us to reconsider the very premise of out sporting prejudices and, as such, would be the greater and even more disconcerting phenomenon.

So, rather to my surprise, I'm backing the Rays in six. How about you gentlemen? Who are you rooting for and why?