Now I have no idea who to root for in the World Series. 
When the season closed on an interleague series with the Phillies visiting Houston, I could not have imagined it was a preview of the World Series. Yet here we are.
The rule of thumb is always, if one team is the Astros, root for the other one.
Same here. My team (Milwaukee) went 26 years between playoff appearances at one point, and has only one World Series appearance, 40 years ago.
OTOH, when you’re the Yankees (not unlike the Cowboys in the NFL), expectations are always much higher, and it does seem like, to many of their fans, anything less than a World Series victory is a failed season.
Phillies vs. Astros must have FOX executives crying in their beer. Their ratings wet dream must have been Dodgers vs. Yankees, an age old rivalry between two large market teams.
I think I would have watched that, but I have zero interest now.
You misspelled “Yankees”.
Well, I was dead-wrong about the Phillies. They’re fun as hell to watch. Their 2nd half wasn’t much to write home about as they seemed to limp into the playoffs. I’m still waiting for their bullpen to implode, but I’ll enjoy it until it does.
As for the Astros, they have fulfilled their god-given destiny and eliminated the Yankees. True American heroes, the lot of them. But while Dusty and Trey Mancini are great people to root for, and Yordan Alvarez is a baseball spectacle, the rest of them can’t get the taint of 2017 off of them. I think they’re the most powerful baseball juggernaut since the Great Red Machine, without a single weakness in their game, but I can’t root for ‘em.
Phillies in 6.
No, I was rooting for the Yankees against the Asstros.
Though I’ll admit, if the Yankees had been playing any other team, I’d be rooting for the other team. (I was hoping the Guardians would beat them.) I’m usually a fan of whoever is playing against the Yankees.
Entitled crybabies. The only thing I like about the Yankees is they don’t allow players to have those ridiculous beards.
Even the Rangers? Really?
So you are saying Seattle should have kept the Pilots, that they might have had at least one team in the WS?
Aw! I like those beards! (Even though I don’t don one myself.) Perhaps it’s because I like hockey, where playoff beards are de rigeur. I kinda of thing it’s an idiotic thing to patrol.
At any rate, me and my friends are glad it’s not the fucking Yankees vs the fucking Dodgers. Not happy with Houston, but at least we have a nice David v. Goliath matchup here, and I’m rooting Philly all the way. The only reason I’ll even watch the WS. Were it the Dodgers repping the NL, forget it. Not interested.
Yes, because I have pity on the Rangers.
It amuses me that in all likelihood the Mariners will be the team that gives the Astros more problems than any other team in the postseason. Seriously, with a bit more luck it would have been Seattle sweeping Houston.
Good old Lasorda, who (besides me) could hate a team he once managed?
Four off days seems like a lot. I guess they’re determined to have the games go well into November.
But if the ALCS had gone 7 games, there would have been just one day off.
The starting date for the Series is set before the wild-card rounds begin.
Fewer than you would think - Altuve, Gurriel, and Bregman are the only ones left. Verlander and McCullers, if you want to include pitchers.
Which I found surprising when I read it today. They’ve made deep runs each year while replacing a lot of players, especially the bullpen and starting rotation. Makes it more of a shame - they didn’t really need to do it in the first place.
It’s a thoroughly cleaned team from the cheating Astros of 2017. Dusty Baker has helped cleanse and purge their tainted image.
It’s time for him to win one!
Altuve is still on the team.
So, management has been overhauled since then?
In any event, they should have been banned from postseason play for five years, at a very minimum.