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My wish list for Major League Baseball's Postseason was rather modest.
Above all, I was rooting for the team of my childhood, the Los Angeles Dodgers, though I knew in my heart they exhibited neither the talent nor the passion to win. After they folded to the Mets, I grew intrigued by the prospects of an all-Texas American League Championship Series; then, Houston and Texas were both summarily eliminated. And through it all, I rooted for the Cubs, curious if this might be the year they could escape the shadows of their past.
I'm half expecting either the Mets or the Royals to serve me with a restraining order--effectively preventing me from supporting their team in the Series.
I feel a bit like Ben Cartwright of the old Bonanza television show. For fourteen years, the patriarch of the Cartwrights watched helplessly as every girl his boys showed interest in tragically died before the end of the episode. But then Ben himself buried three wives, all in flashback, of course. Sans the ladies, the writers were able to preserve the integrity of the Ponderosa Ranch Boys Club. Even as a child, I remember watching when one of the Cartwright boys would become enamored with a beautiful young woman; I wanted to shout out to the woman on the inside of the television console, "No, don't do it! You're gonna die!" Voice trailing off in desperation.
Just perhaps, with the World Series void of my favorites, I'll settle in and enjoy this wondrous game for what it is. It's a reminder that sometimes our perspective in life can skewed by self-interest. It might be a nice change of pace just to be present to what unfolds on the field. Even after a century of organized baseball, we still occasionally see something that has never before been witnessed.
Or, at the very least, we can be thankful that the Blue Jays and their dreadful Rogers Centre, aka SkyDome, won't make an appearance in this year's Fall Classic.
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