A Proposition For The Baseball Gods

I live in a rural part of Kansas. The high school of the town I live in plays 8-Man Football. When it comes to television providers my choices are Dish Network or Direct TV. I have been with Dish Network for several years. When the MLB Network was launched in 2009 I gave Dish Network an earful for not carrying the MLB Network. After all, I had access to NFL Network, NBA Network, and NHL Network, yet I didn’t have the network of my favorite sport. Yet, I stayed with Dish because I certainly wasn’t paying what DirectTV wanted for their services. And really, it wasn’t worth a vacation day for me to wait on a technician to come out and make the switch.

Which is why I was elated when I saw MLB Network appear on my program guide last Thursday. To my wife’s chagrin this will make this coming off-season a lot easier to handle. It also allows me to keep up on other baseball teams. I could do that before with the internet, but it takes a lot more effort to do that. One of the teams I like to follow is the Phillies. I have more than one friend in real life that is Phillies fan. I converse with several more via Twitter and other social media. I like good pitching and the Phillies have a lot of it. MLB Network shows a lot of Phillies games and this allows to me to watch more of them.

The Phillies are in a good place. All 5 of their starters would be the ace on the Royals pitching staff. Weird stuff happens in the MLB play-offs, but with that pitching staff anything short of a title would be a disappointment. However, I recently read this article at Grantland by the Dean of Royals Bloggers Rany Jazayerli. Read it for yourself but he essentially says the likelihood of the Phillies continuing their dominance is anything but a given.

The purpose of this Phillies love fest is not to relive the 1980 World Series where the Phillies and Royals paths crossed. It’s to compare two franchises at different ends of a spectrum. Looking at the information Rany lays out in his article. Where would you rather have your favorite franchise? Like the Phillies with a World Series title at hand but trending down. Or like the Royals near the bottom of the league in everything but trending up.

If I were buying stock I would buy the Royals. However, fandom in the sports world does not have inherent value. Winning a World Series involves being good, and being lucky. Outside the Yankees and Cardinals Word Series Championships are hard to come by. The Royals have one in their 42 seasons. Winning a World Series is the goal of a baseball team. Having a great organization top to bottom is good because it increases the likelihood of winning a World Series, not the other way around. Maybe my point of reference is off because I’ve been watching bad baseball for so many years. But if the Baseball Gods promised me a Royals World Series trophy in exchange for five years of 90+ loss seasons I think I would agree to that.