The 2023 baseball season is history after MLB crowned the Texas Rangers as World Series champions. Thinking back a few years, I know how much fun those fans will have celebrating their first championship. Enjoy the parade!

Here are a few of my immediate, off-the-cuff World Series observations.

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The games

As World Series go, this wasn’t the best or the worst. Game 1 was, however, an instant classic. Here’s Joe Posnanski with the recap of the finish:

The game had been thrilling, the Diamondbacks ran the bases like Whitey Herzog was in charge, the Rangers tied it in the ninth because Corey Seager is a Marvel Superhero, and in the 11th inning, Adolis García stepped to the plate.

Joe then notes that three weeks ago, “the majority of people who would call themselves light-to-moderate baseball fans had never heard of Adolis García.” Then the Houston Astros hit him with a pitch in the ALCS and he simply went off for the rest of that series and subsequently carried it over to the World Series.

That was three weeks ago. And what strikes me now is not only that baseball fans of all dimensions have come to appreciate the awesomeness of Adolis García, it is that when he stepped to the plate in the 11th inning to face Diamondbacks reliever Miguel Castro with the bases empty and the score tied, every part of the baseball brain thought: “Home run.” My wife, Margo, one of those light-to-moderate baseball fans, said out loud: “Home run.” When the count got to 3-1, I said aloud: “The home run happens now.”

Of course he hit the game-winning home run. Go read Joe’s full post on that game . . . it is so much fun. The rest of the series? Not boring (except for Game 4) but not terribly exciting either.

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The Rangers

Texas is certainly a deserving champion. In the regular season they fell into a tie for their division with Houston, thanks to a disastrous final weekend. The tiebreaker put them in the wild card slot. However, they have a strong team that came together at the right time. They have absolutely the best postseason manager of all time in Bruce Bochy. As 2019 reminds us, you can go all the way with the right chemistry and timely streaks. And as Joe Posnanski wrote, for the Rangers to win 11 road games in a row under these playoff circumstances, “well, it’s an all-timer.”

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The Diamondbacks

Arizona was a good team that over-achieved in the playoffs. They have definitely turned a corner, and their fans were great in the few games they got to play at home. Their big achievement in 2023: beating the hated Phillies in the NLCS.

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The Dodgers, Braves, Astros, and Phillies

All of these teams thought they were going to the World Series this year but didn’t make it. This is a pattern for the Dodgers. I think manager Dave Roberts knows how to handle 162 games but he’s somewhat clueless in the postseason. The Braves? They have to get over the hump of having the Phillies in their head, just as the Red Sox finally did with the Yankees. The Astros got what they deserved, although I’ve become a big Yordan Alvarez fan. He’s a monster! And the Phillies? Well, I’m pleased with how it turned out. Those stars better start winning championships soon because those long-term contracts on aging players are going to drag them down not too far in the future (hello Ryan Howard). And no amount of giving Trea Turner standing ovations will ever make up for Philadelphia fans booing Santa Claus.

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The announcers

Joe Davis has become a pretty good play-by-play announcer on Fox, although he’s still no Vin Scully (who is?) or Jon Miller. However, John Smoltz won’t shut up. I liked Smoltz as a player, but as an announcer he talks as if he wants to say all the words he used to get into the 3 1/2-to-4-hour games before the pitch clock into the 2 1/2-to-3 hours of this year’s games with the pitch clock. His mom or best friend or boss needs to tell him to stop talking so much!

I listened to parts of the games on ESPN radio. The crew of Jon Sciambi, Jessica Mendoza, Eduardo Perez, and Buster Olney was much more enjoyable, and I really appreciate having a woman’s voice in the conversation. Some of the most knowledgeable baseball fans I know are women. It only makes sense to add their perspective to the broadcast.

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The commercials

When you watch five baseball games in a row, you see a lot of the same commercials. Endlessly. Every half-inning is a feast for our capitalistic, consumer society. I’ve probably seen Melissa Griffey thrown out of the Geico commercial by Umpire Jim Joyce about 50 times for arguing over Ken Griffey, Jr.’s cute Hawaiian shirt. The Kid also makes a cameo in Geico’s concession ad, which is pretty funny. I wish that piano in the Liberty Mutual ad would fall on the ad agency that makes these stupid commercials. I must have tuned them out, because I don’t recall seeing as many gambling ads in the World Series as I saw on TBS during the earlier games. And I wonder why Geico didn’t run more of their classic horror movie ads about how to make decisions. I still love it!

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Rules changes

The changes to the rules are great! The pitch clock makes the games move much faster, the ban on shifts has returned the game “to its original aesthetics,” and the limitations to throwovers plus the larger size of the bases have led to more base stealing. The Diamondbacks really excelled at this phase of the game, even reverting to some “small ball.”

There is a problem with the lack of quality starting pitchers which needs to be addressed. I don’t have an answer, but Barry Svrluga wrote a good column for the Washington Post where he outlined the issue and offers up his thoughts.

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Spring training

And yes, only 100 days until spring training.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by Nicole Wilson on Unsplash