Good morning, all! It’s hump day!
Baseball has such a great way of connecting games. Monday night, going into Tuesday morning in most time zones, the Dodgers and Blue Jays played 18 innings in Game 3 of the World Series, before the Dodgers emerged with a 6-5 victory on a walk-off home run by Freddie Freeman. Innings wise, it tied the record for the most innings for a World Series game. In 2018, the Dodgers and Red Sox played 18 innings, also at Dodger Stadium, and the Dodgers won, 3-2 on a Max Muncy walk-off home run. Muncy was playing third base for the Dodgers in the game Monday night.
Here are some other connections between those two games:
Mookie Betts played in both games. In 2018, he played for the Red Sox and went 0-for-7. Monday night he went 1-for-8.
Pitcher Clayton Kershaw played in both those games. In 2018 he appeard as a pinch-hitter. Remember, the National League did not have the DH in 2018, so there was no DH, when the NL team was the home club, which the Dodgers were in Game 3 that season. Kershaw pitched 1/3 of an inning in the game on Monday night.
The pitch clock has made a difference. In 2018, the 18-inning game lasted 7:20. Monday night’s game time was 6:39. Also, the two teams combined for 609 pitches, compared to 561 pitches in the 2018 game.
The Dodgers set a World Series record, using 10 pitchers Monday night. The Blue Jays used nine. In the 2018 game, the Dodgers and Red Sox each used nine pitchers.
In both cases, the games went far beyond my bedtime. Sadly, even if it is a nine-inning game, it is beyond my bedtime these days. It will never happen but I wish the World Series was played in the daytime.
Here are some other thoughts as I yearn for the National Pastime of my youth:
I understand life moves on and things change, but that doesn’t mean I can’t yearn for what baseball used to be like.
So now it comes out that the Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier, the center of the NBA’s alleged gambling scheme, owed the IRS more than $8M while taking himself early out of a game. You cannot make this stuff up.
If you think this proposed bill in Congress to limit how much a college coach should be paid is going to pass, let me have what you are smoking.
Brian Kelly is going to get paid what he is still owed by LSU, $53M, and then he will land another job. That is how this thing works.
Word is the Kansas City Chiefs are now leaning more toward a massive renovation of their current stadium, rather than building a new one in next door Kansas.
Could you ever imagine when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were having their classic NBA battles that Magic would be a pregame guest on Fox’s World Series coverage as a part owner of the Dodgers? And being interviewed by ex-baseball star Alex Rodriguez, now owner of an NBA team?
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. As always, thank you for subscribing and have a terrific Wednesday.
DAN