Okay, call me a sore loser. Being a Los Angeles Dodgers fan from birth, I was of course upset by the fact that they lost the National League West pennant race to Atlanta. In fact, I was seen bleeding Dodger blue blood the following day. Yes it was a tough blow--however, I can take some solace in knowing that their losing the pennant race wasn't entirely their fault--they had some help from a few other teams.
Now don't get me wrong--they plain and simple lost to San Francisco--I'm not debating that. However, as you know, the Dodger's losing was only half of it--Atlanta had to win every single one of their last 9 games in order to beat L.A. This is where it gets just a little bit fishy.
Now, being the objective, unbiased, completely unprejudiced reporter of the truth that I am, I will present the facts in a completely impartial, objective manner:
As the bleeding heart Atlanta Braves neared their final nine games of the season, some of the other no-good, evil, corrupt teams decided that it would be rather fun to annihilate the Dodgers from the pennant race. I won't give out the names of these teams . . . just the initials Cincinnati Reds and Houston Astros. These two pathetic excuses for baseball teams were 20 and 29 games out of first place respectively. There was no way they could possibly hope to even break .500, much less get into the pennant race, so these hopelessly backwards teams decided they would mess it up for their friends in L.A.
Atlanta's last nine games were with Houston and Cincinnati. And isn't it just amazing that Atlanta won all nine of those games. Well, imagine that! Isn't it something that prior to the games a poll was taken of Cincinnati players in which 25 players said they wanted Atlanta to win the series, 5 abstained, and 2 didn't want to talk about it at all. Hmmmm.
Now I'm not saying that Cincinnati and Houston lost their games to Atlanta (actually, I am saying that, but I'd better tone it down a little.) What I'm saying is that they sure did make it easy on them. I mean, look at it: when Atlanta played Cincinnati, the Reds had a new man playing Center Field. Actually, he wasn't all that new--he was Mariano Duncan who has been playing in the majors for over 11 years, and had never until the game against Atlanta played center field. Well, wouldn't you know, our buddy Mariano botched a couple of plays which gave Atlanta 2 runs. This made the score 6-5, with the Reds still leading. Now the Reds, obviously wanting desperately to win this game, sent relief pitcher Rob Dibble to the mound to "hang on" to the one run lead they had (inadvertently) acquired. Dibble was the perfect man for the job seeing as how he had screwed up his last 4 out of 5 save attempts up to that point. Dibble immediately gave up a single followed by a home run, two outs later. He had again messed up and Atlanta won again. Amazing, wouldn't you say?
Well, it wasn't quite over yet, as Atlanta had to face the dreaded last-place Houston Astros. And who might Houston have as their starting pitcher for two of the three games? Well, no one other than Jeff Juden, a 20 year-old rookie who had only pitched one other major league game in his life--a game which he lost, by the way. And wonder of all wonders, Houston lost all of their games. Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda pointed a finger at Houston for this, to which Houston manager Art Howe laughingly (and with a big smile on his face) responded, "Tommy should be concerned about his team winning three games in San Francisco." Interesting our friend Art didn't bother to even deny Tommy's allegations. Just as well Art didn't waste his breath--we already know the truth.
Now don't get me wrong--I'm happy to see Atlanta finish first this year, seeing as how they have finished in last place four out of their last five seasons. However, I don't think Houston and Cincinnati played their hardest. Call me idealistic (it's probably better than some other things you could call me) but I've always kind of been under the misguided notion that everyone should try their hardest the whole season, and let the wins and losses determine who's best. When one team wants another to win so they "give them a few breaks" this takes away from the true spirit of the game and can often (as in this case) mess up the outcome. If Houston or Cincinnati had won just one of those nine games, the series would have gone to a tiebreaker between L.A. and Atlanta. But alas, it never did. Oh well, that's the way it goes . . . by the way, if you'd like to relive the 1988 World Series in which the Dodgers did win, we'll be pulling out the old videotapes and watching them . . . on October 19th--we'll probably start at about oh, say 5:29 p.m.