A lot of the time in sports it's better to be lucky than good. This especially holds true in baseball. More than in any other sport, inferior baseball teams can beat superior ones on any given day. It's in the nature of the game that one split-second burst of indecision, one screwy hop, or one bad pitch can and often will make or break a game.
Team sports from soccer to hockey and from lacrosse to basketball are determined by the strength and cohesiveness of an entire team. In these sports, the most talented team will win most of the time. In baseball, that's often true, but from day to day, anybody can beat anybody.
This season - the first of the second century of Major League Baseball's modern era, a season of dominant offenses and mediocre pitching - the Boston Red Sox are suddenly a trendy pick. People in New England are honestly excited and Sports Illustrated went as far as to claim that the Sox will win the World Series on the cover of its baseball preview.
Baseball is often called America's national pastime and like American society baseball is ruled by gaps in opportunity between the rich and poor. Even though this is baseball, where any team can win on any day, not every team in Major League Baseball currently has the resources to win it all.
They could: Oakland and Cincinnati aren't any more "small market" than Minnesota and Kansas City, but they succeed thanks to intelligent management and smart use of what money they have. But really, right now, no more than half the teams in baseball can realistically dream of a world championship in the next three years.
The Yankees, Indians and Braves are the cream of the crop, followed by Texas, Houston, the Mets, Seattle, St. Louis, Arizona, Baltimore and Boston. Beyond that is a group of dreamers and beggars, some of whom might make runs toward titles, but none really belong among the elite.
Some say this is a problem for baseball and suggest juggling the economic system to accommodate the poor. I'm all for socialist baseball; there's no reason there should be talk of consolidating teams or making cities build even more stadiums so some fat rich white men can make more money and then supposedly use it to make their teams more competitive. Revenue sharing and a salary cap should be introduced; their implementation would raise interest in dismal outposts like Montreal and Milwaukee and keep the Yankees from buying the pennant every year.
But for now we just return to the Sox. SI says this is the year that everything will go right for Boston. Their rotation of castoff and rehabilitated arms will meld and carry them past New York and into the World Series, where they'll win it all and let old Sox fans all over New England die happy.
It could happen, just as Oakland could go on a crazy tear behind scrappy guys like Matt Stairs and Jason Giambi and win it all or the Orioles could stay hot all year and ride a white-hot Albert Belle all the way to the title. That's the beauty of baseball in April: anything can happen. But when looking ahead to October, I'll keep my money on the Yankees.
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