If there is a season, there will be no title ‘asterisk’
didn’t even make the playoffs. There was an extra round of playoffs before the league championship series.
And not a single player, Baker said, felt as if the title was tainted.
“I still think about how special that feeling was,” Baker said. “I never forgot it. And it would be no different now.
“It doesn’t matter how the season will look, everybody is going to be running the same race. And winning the World Series is going to feel like no other. Imagine the storybook ending on this season.
“This is America’s game. It goes on for eight months a year. It will be different without the electricity of fans in the stands, but it’s baseball.”
The Atlanta Braves won their only World Series in 1995, the same year that the work stoppage delayed the start of the season. Teams played 144 games instead of 162.
Try telling the Braves their accomplishment felt any different.
“It will be a different year obviously,” Braves manager Brian
Snitker said. “But regardless of how many games we play, and what you did to get there, I think it will be special.”
The San Francisco Giants won three World Series championships in five years, each one unique, and if it happens again this year, the emotions will be feel completely different.
And, yes, that trophy will be sitting prominently in their gorgeous ballpark, right alongside the others.
“I definitely don’t think it would mean any less,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “I think there could be something really powerful about winning a championship in any sport at a time where everyone is really coming together, appreciating the healing role sports play in society.
“What we’re facing is something larger than any of us, and experiencing that moment of unity as a team under the circumstances, could be even more emotional.”
Says St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Shildt, who jokes that he has set a world record for the longest honeymoon after being married on March 6: “Being able to win this year’s World Series, regardless of the circumstances, you’re still having the most elite players in the world compete for one title. And regardless of what that formula looks like, the magnitude would still be equal of a whole season.
“That ring will be more than earned.”
If there weren’t a trophy to be won, or it didn’t matter whether you won or lost, why bother coming back to play? It’s the competition that has driven the players to reach the major leagues, and if anything, a shorter season may fuel that drive.
The mantra of, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, will not exist if the season is played in 2020.
“We always talk about every game being meaningful in the rugged NL West,” Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo says, “but a losing streak of seven to eight games can sock it to you.”
This is the first time there has been optimism that there will even be a season since the pandemic shut down the sports world last month. It doesn’t matter if the leagues will be realigned, or if the season becomes more like baseball’s version of March Madness.
“Who cares, if we’re playing, who really cares what the changes are,” Snitker says. “I just want to play. I’m willing to do whatever they decided to do, make it work, and be really good. When we start playing again, it will be good for our country.
“I don’t think anybody will be [complaining] again about the length of the Red Sox-Yankees games anymore.”
Who’s going to complain about the time of any games? The rash of strikeouts? The walks? Even bat-flips?
This is a country starved for sports, pleading for normalcy, and baseball hopes to be the one to provide that relief.
“It’s not apples to apples, but look what baseball did for our country after 9/11” Roberts said. “Baseball can provide a semblance of a sign of things to come, a sign of hope, and getting baseball in people’s homes.
“You look at this pandemic, and you see what this has done to our entire world and country, the economy, and jobs and unemployment. The morale of the country has been greatly affected. Sports can unify this country, and to come back is going to be pretty emotional.”
Who knows, after this season, maybe we’ll never look at baseball again the same.
And maybe that’s a blessing. “I think the country needs it, man,” Baker said. “There’s a greater appreciation of what we had than what we lost, and hopefully, we can get it back.”
(USA Today/TNS)