One Week Later, Does Anyone Care?

It was one week ago today that the Yankees defeated the Phillies 7-3 for their 27th world championship.

It was a fitting end for the postseason it was in: lots of hype, a bad baseball game, and then talk about that city's respective NFL team.

Who could be excited/worked up at all about this outcome? Yankee fans? "Woo hoo, we won our 27th title, and the 5th since I've been alive." I mean I'm sure it was good for a "27th heaven" facebook status, but most I talked to spent the next day complaining about how bad the Giants' defense was.

What about Philly fans? Is there some inescapable grief? No, because they won it last year and were all still too giddy about that. Philadelphians (not a word; go with it anyway) love the Phillies more than any other team. They're deservedly proud of their squad and were okay with losing in the grand finale to the best team in baseball.

... Which leads me to why nobody else was excited about this series. Besides the rest of the country having both rational and irrational hatreds toward everything sports-related in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, this series was the best team in baseball against the second best team in baseball. I know NOTHING when it comes to predicting the MLB. I'm the guy who predicted at the beginning of September that the Angels wouldn't make the playoffs. I'm pretty sure I predicted the Indians to go to the playoffs at the beginning of the season. Yet I said before the first pitch of the 2009 MLB postseason was thrown that it would come down to the Yankees beating the Phillies in 6. If I could predict it, surely most people at least could see there was a real possibility of it happening.

Last point: You can ask, "Isn't that what it's supposed to be all about? The two best teams in baseball squaring off?" The answer: sure, if you want to decide who the best team in baseball between those two is. The problem: that wasn't the case here. Every person who followed a lick of baseball the entire season knew the Yankees were the best team in baseball. They bought their way to the top better than anyone else did but still managed to play like a team. This outcome was predetermined. Throw that in with a World Series that featured a total of zero 1-run games and you're left with a city that stopped celebrating a World Championship hours after it happened and sports media that would rather talk about Eli Manning's plantar fasciitis than Hideki Matsui's clutchness.