Earlier this week, ESPN continued to embarrass themselves with horrible, horrible, horrible journalism. David Schoenfield wrote a piece that was utterly stupid, ridiculous and down-right awful. The article was entitled: Welcome to the worst World Series ever. The title says it all really, one doesn’t even need to read the article to understand the magnitude of stupidity the article entails. What’s even worse, is that unsurprisingly, his reasoning was even more stupid than the general idea of the article.
First, he insinuated that small-market teams shouldn’t be in the World Series, because they couldn’t possibly be the best team without spending the most money. It’s kind-of sad that such ‘high-end’ journalists still, ironically, buy into the belief that money wins World Series rings. David Schoenfield, and everyone else who writes for ESPN are quite simply blind to the fact this, in their eyes, prominent and feasible theory is actually a fallacy. Yes, money doesn’t translate into wins, unless the right men are spending the money.
Both the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals have modest payrolls in comparison to the big-market teams like the New York Yankees, or the Los Angeles Dodgers. None of the big-market teams are in the World Series, yet the smaller-market teams like the Giants and the Royals are. This fact baffles and amazes ESPN. How can a team that hasn’t spent the most money possibly be in the World Series? How, how how? It simply doesn’t make sense — if you work for ESPN, that is.
Well, it is because both franchises aren’t comprised of egotistical players, who only take the field everyday to garnish huge salaries and buy fancy sports cars. They aren’t comprised of GMs and managers who believe that good pitchers have lots of wins, and good hitters have lots of RBIs, and in order to win games, one must spend ludicrous amounts of money to buy these players.
Nope, shockingly. They are comprised of players of take the field because they love baseball, because they want to win. The GMs and managers know how to build real teams, and strong clubhouses, which must be news to ESPN. I’ll spell it out, plain and simple, for them: Money doesn’t buy World Series.
His second, arguably, even more idiotic point was: The Royals and the Giants can’t be the best teams because they both entered the postseason as wild-card victors. It makes me laugh, really. I mean, trying to argue this is like trying to argue a coin has one side. Trying to argue gravity doesn’t exist. Why, you may ask? He makes a good point.
Well, answer me this, surely on the same basis that if the Giants and Royals aren’t the best because they are the wildcard victors, then winning the division therefore makes you the best team, in ESPN’s eyes. What they seem to be blind to is the fact that the division winning teams got beat by the wild-card teams.
If winning the division makes you the best like ESPN suggest, then why aren’t the Dodgers, the Orioles, the Angels, the Nationals, the Cardinals or the Tigers in the World Series? If winning the division is so, so, so important and makes you the better than the wild-card teams; why aren’t these teams in the World Series? Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me either. I’ve heard it only makes sense to ignorant, idiotic and quite stupid ESPN writers.
The blatantly obvious fact is: Great teams play well for 162 games in order to secure their place in October. The best teams play well for 175+ games. If you actually want to make it to the World Series, and play for the right to become the best team in baseball, it’s kind-of important to play well right into October. Playing well right into October is what separates the best teams and the great teams.
You’ll be glad to hear my rant/my attack on ESPN is over. Sadly, I’d predict that ESPN’s attack on the Royals and the Giants is not yet over. You know something, however? The opinion of such a deplorable writer/article, are so irrelevant. True baseball fans know that the matchup between the Royals and Giants represents an amazing World Series. Two teams who have defied the odds, and ridden their amazing styles of baseball into the Fall Classic. Contrary to what ESPN say, welcome to the best World Series ever.