Commentary: The excruciating conclusion of the Dodgers’ glorious season
This is a story about what’s wrong with Major League Baseball. It also is a story about how it’s not all bad and the Dodgers are the good guys.
A lot of what is wrong with baseball is simple: It isn’t supposed to be about one team, and it isn’t supposed to care about the fortunes of a major league baseball team.
Last year, the Dodgers were almost a lock for a World Series championship. It’s what everyone thought would happen. For a while, they really did. For a while, they looked like baseball’s real-life version of the U.S.S. Olympic figure skating team, trying to stay together for the whole tournament.
Now, they are just another team, part of another league that is not as fun to watch. The World Series has become a competition between two teams, not a team between teams.
In the regular season, all Dodger fans watched the Yankees and the Red Sox beat their rivals, and the Dodgers just got lucky. Now, the Dodger fans’ regular-season heroes have become the World Series’ worst.
I’m not here to tell you the Dodgers were perfect in 2013, or even in 2010, when they were in first place. The Dodgers were never perfect last season. They were never close.
All we’ve got is a month to remember.
The Dodgers were at their best in May, when they won 12 of their last 15 games. They were at their worst in September, when they lost 17 of their last 19 games. They got lucky in June with their three-game sweep against the Cardinals.
In July, they lost to the Brewers in Cincinnati. In August, they lost to the Orioles. In September, they lost to the Giants.
On the night that they clinched the NL West with a loss to the Giants, I was at Dodger Stadium. My wife was there. My kids were there, and we all watched the game together. It was the first time that the Dodgers won 12 games in a row since 1990.
I have a picture of my family there that night that will always remind me of these times. I was sitting on the upper deck, while my wife and my kids were down below on the field.
It was the night that I realized the Dodgers are not the team that you root for because its
