The reporters at The Athletic overwhelmingly pick the Phillies to end up with Manfred's Piece of Metal™ at the end of it all: Phillies (47.4%), Padres (21.1%), Dodgers (10.5%), Astros (10.5%), Guardians (10.5%).
How ESPN's 27 "experts" are predicting things will go:
ALWC
Astros 22, Tigers 5
Orioles 18, Royals 9NLWC
Padres 27, Atlanta 0
Brewers 23, Mets 4ALDS
Yankees 24, Orioles 3
Astros 13, Guardians 11, Tigers 3NLDS
Phillies 26, Brewers 1
Padres 22, Dodgers 5ALCS: Yankees, 13, Astros 7, Guardians 5, Orioles 2
NLCS: Phillies 15, Padres 9, Dodgers 3
World Series: Phillies 13, Padres 7, Yankees 3, Orioles 2, Dodgers, 1, Astros 1
Jayson Stark is doing what he does best: watch baseball all day (1,240 pitches over 8 horns and 13 minutes) and tell you the weird, wild, and improbability of what is happening. . . . Jeff Passan (ESPN) reports why each team could win the World Series. His WS pick? Phillies over Astros.
Other News: Brett H. (who resides a scant 13 miles from my last NYC address) won the Joy of Sox W-L contest and Pete Rose died.
Most fans over a certain age know Rose's famous and classic quote: "I would walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball". However, my favourite Rose utterance came in 1970, right after the publication of Jim Bouton's Ball Four, the pitcher's brutally honest (and hilarious) account of his 1969 season. Unlike every single baseball book published up to that time, Ball Four presented players as they actually were, doing things they didn't want anyone to know they were doing and speaking as professional athletes actually spoke (numerous players were not pleased). Commissioner Bowie Kuhn demanded (in vain) that Bouton confess the entire book was fiction, all lies.
Anyway, Bouton was with Astros in 1970 and before one of their first games against Cincinnati, Rose looked out of the Reds dugout, saw Bouton across the infield, and yelled: "Fuck you, Shakespeare!"
