What’s your preferred matchup for the World Series? Here are your options:
Phillies vs. Yankees
Phillies vs. Angels
Dodgers vs. Yankees
Dodgers vs. Angels
For my part, I’d be really happy with the Yankees against either National League team, but with so many friends who are Phillies fans, I have to admit that a Phillies/Yankees matchup would be awesome. On the other hand, I am still traumatized from the 1981 World Series where the Yankees won the first two only to lose the next four to the Dodgers. I want revenge. The Yankees played the Dodgers in 1977, 1978, and 1981, so it formed in my youthful mind that the Dodgers and the Yankees are kind of the optimal matchup.
I really like the Angels ballclub and philosophy, but I still see them as an expansion team (even though they are older than I am) and I don’t like to watch new teams in the Fall Classic. There is nothing worse that watching the Rays or Rockies or Diamondbacks in October. I want tradition and echoes of history.
What say you?
Dodgers v. Angels
Let’s have a Freeway Series. Of course, I’m a Californian so Yankee loses have never traumatized me.
I’m still all fucked up from the Yankees getting swept in the 1976 World Series by the Big Red Machine. My Dad was from Iowa and grew up as a Cincy fan. He wore a Reds hat. I don’t think I really every forgave him.
I’m guessing ’77 and ’78 helped move your “recovery” along quite nicely, not to mention the domination of the 90’s (helps playing the Braves twice, too, which managed to mess me up rather nicely — especially Wohlers and the sliders in game 4 of ’96 to Leyritz when he couldn’t even see the fastball)…
you underestimate the trauma.
yes, winning in 1977 and 1978 was the highlights of my youth. But we lost Munson in 1979, won over 100 games in 1980 and then got beat by the Royals in the ALCS, and blew a two-game lead in the 1981 World Series. That was followed by thirteen years of not making the playoffs at all, and then a strike that cancelled the season when we were strongly in first place. Then we blew a two-game lead against the Mariners in 1995, ended Don Mattingly’s career.
So, yeah, things got better from 1996-2000, but being a Yankee fan hasn’t been all victories and parades. For all but two years of my young life (before reaching 25) I was bitterly disappointed. And things haven’t been too great this decade, either.
Munson’s untimely death was a tragedy for all of baseball.
Phillies vs. Yankees
Go Phillies! Game 1 NLCS tonight at 8 from Dodger Stadium.
I love Chávez Ravine. Ever been to a game there?
What is Chavez Ravine?
I’ve only been to Citizens Bank Park and the Vet.
that’s where the Dodgers play.
Got it. You’ve been there I take it. It looks pretty casual.
It’s a traditional space. They didn’t even have drinking fountains when it was first built, or so I was told by someone who worked there. (That doesn’t make it true!)
I’d love to see LA get one of these fancy new sushi & garlic fries stadiums. I really miss the wonderful one in Seattle, although I hated that it was named after an insurance company.
Chavez Ravine
I have. It’s kinda weird getting there. Same way with the Rose Bowl. I know why everyone leaves after the 7th inning. It takes forever getting out.
I now live close enough I can walk home. Woohoo!
Isn’t most of the crowd usually gone by the 8th?
Not when we’re winning. 😉
Another vote for the Phillies-Yankees Series here. 🙂
Yankees vs. Dodgers.
I remember the Yankees, Dodgers series in 1963. I’ve been a Yankee fan my whole life but the thing I remember most about that series was Sandy Koufax. He was the best pitcher I had ever seen and I haven’t seen anyone since who comes close.
I never saw Koufax pitch but I hear Gibson and Drysdale were nearly as good.
Ron Guidry in 1978 is the best I’ve seen. Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson in their prime were the ones I feared the most.
Orel Hershiser was ridiculous in 1988.
The Yankees actually did pretty well against Roger Clemens.
What about “Doc” Gooden in 1984 and 1985? Did you ever see J.R. Richard pitch?
Richard was simply amazing before his tragic stroke!
Yankees-Dodgers, A-Rod vs. Manny
And the coach vs. his old team..! That’s the drama I want to see!
Angels v. Anyone, I see NL teams as barely legitimate anyway, being a mindless AL backer. This is because I can’t run and throw like a little girl but I CAN hit so I have great emotional resonance to the DH rule. Also my team is AL.
And speaking of Teams, if the Twins had money and a management that did not function like the Bush White House (always promoting from within, no accountability, low intelligence) they would be the Angels. So the Angels are what I think the Twins could be if I were in charge and had a personal worth of Arte Moreno.
I love the brutal honest of this comment! 😉
It’s rather freeing! =D
Yankees vs. Dodgers
I want to see Joe Torre back in New York. However Yankees vs. Phillies wouldn’t bother me, since I go to school in the Philly area. It would be nice to have the games in close proximity to me, but Torre in NYC again is too good to pass up.
No – Torre VS. NYC is too good to pass up! 😉
I can live with Yankees/Phillies or Dodgers/Angels mainly on my dislike of how cross country travel can have a negative impact on players performances. But no matter, I’ve always been a Yankees fan.
I’ll go with Yankees vs. Dodgers only because it will make so many people in New York so very, very happy. There are still a lot of Brooklyn natives who are not so much Yankees fans as Los Angeles Dodgers haters. The betrayal burns through the ages.
They’re still mad that their “Trolley Dodgers” named team left?
Phils-Yanks….and Phils in 5, making it hurt
fuck the fucking Yankees…..
oh yes- phils in 3 after yanks just give up and refuse to come out of he clubhouse to start game 4.
I live to hate the yankees- as I told my son, in his introduction to baseball- “if you cheer for the yankees, jesus will kill mommy”
I just don’t care. I think I’ve just about lost interest in baseball.
Okay, I really dislike the Yankees and the Dodgers, so the other two teams.
I have a hard time rooting for any of these teams, since they’re four of the richest teams in the game and since my local team (Seattle) has never even been to a WS. No great sympathy for any of them here.
That said, I’d love to see Dodgers/Angels, just because it’s crosstown. It also wouldn’t hurt, after last year’s Tampa-Philly matchup, to get the World Series out of the Eastern Time Zone.
On that score, Boo, your comment that the 48-year-old Angels are an “expansion” team, and therefore unworthy, is another way of saying that outside the Dodgers, Giants, and A’s (all of which relocated from back east, A’s with a stop in Kansas City) there are no legitimate teams west of St. Louis. Ahem.
From a baseball standpoint, though, any of the four possible matchups should be pretty good. It’s been a while since the four final teams have all been this good and this playoff-tested.
I’m sentimental for the Mariners. They’re the ones that taught me to love baseball. I sympathize re the big money teams. But I love big cities and the wealth that can come with that..!
Dodgers vs. Yankees. There’s no glory in beating the Angels. There’s a lot of glory in beating the Yanks! 😉
That said, my second choice would of course be a Freeway Series. But I, too, live in SoCal, so my opinion re that should be automatically disqualified as territorially biased.
Btw – Dodgers closed the gap – 4 to 5 right now…
But isn’t territorial bias what being a fan is all about?
I love watching new teams in the Fall Classic. The past decade of playoff ball has been an excellent run, not only for new teams, but teams that hadn’t been heard from in October for a while.
Personally I loved seeing these teams in the playoffs: Arizona (especially in 2001), Anaheim, Florida, Chicago (both), Colorado, Tampa Bay…and yes, Philadelphia.
Anything to break the Yanks-Braves stranglehold of the ’90s.
The Astros, too. I lived in Houston in ’86, when the Mets broke their hearts in the NLCS, so it was fun to see them make it. (Even if the White Sox then crushed them.)
Yes, I didn’t mean to forget Houston! Sorry about that. 🙂
I just want the Dodgers in there. I live in LA and remember seeing them win the World Series (on TV) in 1988. It’s been a long dry stretch since then. The other three teams playing have all won World Series in this decade.
Dodgers vs. Angels would be good for SoCal. But I’d love to see the Dodgers beat the Yanks.
I went to the game tonight. A real slugfest, good ballgame, but Phillies came out on top. Hopefully the Dodgers take tomorrow’s game.
What say you?
Like any good American sports fan, I say “fuck the Yankees”.
I say that more than anything I want USC to hang 100 on Notre Dame Saturday (it’s sports and Southern California so it’s kinda sorta on topic).
Anybody but the Damn Yankees.
As a Cubs fan, I strongly agree with you. Beyond that, I would add that the Angels will be a very tough team for the Yankees to beat. It will be interesting.
Yankees/Phillies would be an old time classic match up, but I don’t know if I want to watch them trying to play Baseball dressed in Parkas! From that standpoint, I think Dodgers/Angels is a better match up, but being from Michigan, I don’t think I would enjoy watching games to the wee hours of the morning. In other words, the extended schedule-playoff system, plus the moving of starting times to accommodate TV networks has pretty much ruined the “Fall Classic”. But I’m an old guy who remembers only the good parts of the “good old days”, so take it for what it’s worth.
I don’t really see how it’s an old time classic matchup, other than the fact that both teams are really old. The Phillies (being America’s all time suckiest team) faced the Yankees in the World Series once, in 1950.
For the Phillies, that was the second NL pennant they had won in 67 years of existence up to that point, and they have only won three more since, for a total of 5 in 126 seasons.
There’s nothing “classic” about the Phillies, except that they classically suck balls. And there’s nothing “classic” about seeing the Yankees in the World Series again, unless you find something charming and nostalgic about nausea.
If you recall, 1981 was a complete reversal on the outcome of the 1977 series, where the Dodgers won the first two in Chavez Ravine, and then dropped the next 4. The three home run game by Jackson (on three consecutive pitches, to make it even more astounding) in NY will always be in the top 10 greatest baseball moments…
yes, I remember.