He was a neighbor of mine here when I lived here as a kid, and my dad took me to see him one day. Alas I wasn’t a baseball fan then, and barely remember the encounter.
Yankees even the series 1-1.
What a nail-biter tonight. Kudos to Chisholm for scoring from first on a single with an excellent slide.
After he saved a run with a diving stop in the seventh.
1 game, winner takes all.
Progressive Field IS a nice park! People are always asking where the best place to sit is and I’ve sat everywhere from the suites to the bleachers to standing room and there’s not a bad view in the place.
If the Yankees win tomorrow, it would be their first time beating the Red Sox in a playoff series since 2003.
The WC series are definitely bucking the trend with 3 of the 4 series going the full three games this year (with the fourth yet to be determined). Since 2022, when the current playoff format was permanently adopted, the most in any year of series that have gone to the limit was one (with all four being sweeps in 2023). Heck, in the kooky 2020 Covid playoffs, when this format was first initially used, 6 out of the 8 series were sweeps.
Maybe this is just a coincidence, or maybe its an indication of how much parity there was in MLB this year. I guess time will tell.
I don’t follow baseball particularly closely, so I’ve just realized this year that the new (to me) WC playoff format has ALL 3 games played at the stadium of the higher-seeded team. That’s the shittiest playoff rule I’ve ever heard of in any sport! Whose fucking terrible idea was this and does anyone like it? What even is the justification for not having at least one game at the other team’s field?
Because these teams are already worn out from travel. They’ve done endless flying and it’s just a 3-game series. It’s not worth it to do Game 1 here, Game 2 there, Game 3 here. And, in theory, it would give teams more incentive to jostle hard in the regular season to get the higher seeding for the wild card berth.
Saves time, the 3 game wildcard format is dumb to start with. It means the best teams have 5 or 6 days off before playing.
Heaven forfend! The millionaires have to hop on a private plane and fly for a couple hours!
In the case of the game that’s on right now, it’s a 4+ hour flight, and a three time zone difference, if they were to go from Los Angeles to Cincinnati for a Game 3 tomorrow. Most, if not all, of the teams fly on private/charter jets these days anyway.
Generally speaking, MLB puts in a “travel day” off when teams change cities during the playoffs. Adding in a travel day for the WC round would add yet another day to a playoff schedule that’s already too long.
Good point. It’s easy enough to say that “Well, New York to Boston and back again is a piffle,” but it sure isn’t when it comes to multi-hour flights through three time zones, such as LA and Cincinnati would find. Especially when nobody knew how things would shake out earlier in the season.
I’m on the fence about how the wild card games’ locations are decided, but I’m glad that they’re being decided by a series. I was not a fan of the one-game sudden death WC games.
Because in 2004 the Red Sox came back from being down 3-0 in games to sweep the Yankees and win the pennant, and then sweep the Cardinals to win the World Series. The Curse of the Bambino, since 1918, was finally broken.
With this crappy bullpen, I don’t see how the Dodgers can get past the Phillies.
I think they should give the lower seeded team one game in the wildcard playoffs. It’s too big an advantage for a team that might’ve only barely edged out the other team by 1-2 wins to get all 3 home games. Play the first game at the lower seeded stadium and the last two at the higher seeded stadium. They can add an extra day to the playoff schedule.
I’m a fair weather Guardians fan. I was pretty into baseball as a teenager and lost interest after that, but I come back to watch the end of the season if they’re doing well. As a Cleveland sports fan I’m not gonna take anyone’s shit for only showing up occasionally for baseball and basketball, I’ve done plenty of suffering.
Obnoxious that these games are at noon eastern (9 pacific), it’s hard for me to watch them. I’d rather they doubled up the late afternoon/evening schedule and put them on in prime time. How many people can really watch a baseball game in the middle of the day on a weekday?
Double sucks on the west coast this week when the Browns play in Europe at what will be 6:30am here.
For me, that’s not the only surprise. The Guardians were red hot in September, and Detroit went from a big lead to finishing second in the AL Central, but the odds for the Tigers are almost twice as good as the odds for the Guardians. Timing is everything, and how a team is playing at the end of September can mean a whole lot.
I don’t know. Teams are used to flying into a city and playing a 3 game series 3 days in a row. It’s what they do all season long.
I love that park. Good seating, great atmosphere. I love that they so extensively honor their history, going right back to 1901; the place is covered in monuments, murals, posters, little plaques.