It's now fair to say that we've all seen enough, and we can demand that Philadelphia and Texas finish their obviously menial tasks and get to the World Series nobody thought possible let alone asked to see.
After watching the Phillies boatrace Arizona last night 10-nil, it became clear that one of these teams is not like the other, and even those who were agnostics re: the Clavicle ‘n’ Cleavage Boys can no longer resist their ribald charms. And Texas, which plays at home against Houston tonight, has made a mockery of the Astros' postseason invulnerabilities en route to becoming only the third team ever to start the playoffs with a seven-game winning streak. The laws of probability are giving the Snakes and 'Stros a right going over, and the reasons for going on with these cheap charades have surely expired. In other words, let's get on with the inevitable, shall we?
We say all this in hopes that by demanding the worst possible outcome for everyone involved, our gasbaggy faux-hubris will cause the galactic pixies to say, "Oh, you want two sweeps, do you? Well, watch this" and extend both series as the gods intended. Jinxes are nonsense of course, but we've exhausted all the rational ideas.
Our faultless logic—that more games is better because they are more rather than fewer—is no less true in the face of the overwhelming evidence. Even a patently unworthy matchup like Phils-Squamates deserves a longer run if only to kill time more productively than six days off listening to press conference and watching stock video of batting practice in which all the players look like they suffered head wounds at the Battle of Antietam.
This flies in the face of what has become the twin planks of the Defector platform here at Nowhere-On-The-Lake, that the Phillies should win because they exude sexiness one button at a time, and that the Rangers should win because they're not the Astros. This is known as the McKinney Doctrine, named after its most strident proponent who loves the Phillies because they are her latest hometown team and hates the Astros "because they win too much," including, though she dare not say it, the 2022 World Series over . . . well, you know.
But the logic remains the same. Games are good, otherwise why would we tolerate such abysmal behaviors from so many people within the industry to watch them? More games means more watching and fewer days complaining that there's too much time between games. Clearly this demands a more representative showing from Arizona and Houston, and we will now pause while we convince Comrade McKinney not to burn down our cabin.
Will this happen? The evidence suggests not, and at this point the Diamondbacks in particular seem like they feel lucky just to get comped into the building, and the Astros are finding out that the Rangers with a bullpen are a lot harder to deal with than the Rangers without one. These budding realities, we argue, are not good for baseball because … well, because baseball is baseball games, and the minimum number of playoff games to be played before the World Series is 28, and we are on pace for 30. And every game without Corbin Carroll or Yordan Alvarez is, well, a game without Corbin Carroll or Yordan Alvarez. How can it be more existential than that?
Revoltingly, we may be about to find out.
