American Sport is Pink Cocaine

The World Series Starts Today - it's potent stuff, be careful

Oct 25, 2024

A guest post by Dodgers fanatic Matt Heath, who you can find in his own Life Less Punishing way here.

FOR THE first time in 43 years, we have a Dodgers-Yankees World Series, and it starts today. So much to be excited about. It’s LA v NYC. West Coast v East Coast. Two iconic teams. Two massive population bases. It’s Commissioner of Major League Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr’s wet dream. The teams are evenly matched, so it will likely go to Game 7.

Then there’s the history. It’s a rivalry that goes all the way back to when both teams were from NYC. Arguably, the Yankees are the fly-by-night New York team in this competition.

The Dodgers formed in Brooklyn in 1884 as the Grays long before the quintessentially New York Yankees arrived in the Big Apple. The Grays became the Bridegrooms and, eventually, the Trolley Dodgers. A name that acknowledged the skill their fans needed to avoid heavy traffic to get into their stadium. The New York Yankees, called the Orioles back then, didn’t move to New York from Baltimore until 1903. There, they changed their name to The Highlanders (just like Otago) and being in different leagues in the city, they didn’t play the Dodgers for the first time until 1913. The following year, the Highlanders became the Yankees, and17 years after that, they played the Dodgers in a World Series for the first time. The 1941 World Series was colloquially dubbed the Bronx Bombers v Dem Bums. As much as the Dodgers loved being called bums, it didn’t stop the Yankees from winning the series 4-1. The two teams have met in the World Series a further 10 times — more than any other rivalry. The Yankees have won eight of those.

This brings us to the 2024 World Series, the first pitch of which is today at 1:08pm. As a huge LA Dodgers fan, can I just say ahead of this historic, exciting, dream series… that I am not looking forward to it at all.

I feel sick thinking about the thing. When you really care about a team, playoffs hurt. The games are not fun — well, not until you win. You enjoy the chat around the games. You love the players. You enjoy drinking while you watch. But there is too much at stake to experience any comfort during the fixture.

We Kiwis need to be very careful around American sports. They are extremely addictive and pushy. In recent years, they have been knocking louder and louder at our door to get in. I love my rugby, league and cricket, but as great as these sports are, they should fear the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB. American leagues and franchises are peddling their shit on every global corner.

If New Zealand sport is equivalent to weed and booze, American sport is crack, heroin and a Dodger Dog all in one. It might even be meth, MDMA, bath salts, caffeine, opioids. The pink cocaine stuff that caused problems in Argentina last week. Maybe it's too soon to bring that up, but either way, American sport is cashed up, glamourous, brilliantly hyped, potent and, in the case of baseball, a nearly everyday habit. You think the NRL has a long season? The MLB teams play a minimum of 162 games a year. Watching that much baseball takes a toll on your life. It becomes your life. But that’s the easy part. Add a nerve-racking post-season with a Wild Card Series, Division Series, Championship Series and World Series, and a team may lose a title on the 184th game of the year.

With so much life invested into the regular season games, an early playoff knockout is like losing a limb. The 2022 season was particularly rough for LA fans. I was at Dodgers Stadium for two of those National League Division Series games. While I was stoked to be sitting three rows behind Jason Bateman, I felt personally embarrassed when we lost the series 3-1 to the dirty Padres. To my shame, I was there when that California Goose crash-landed in shallow right field.

I was part of the hated section of the crowd who chanted “Luck Duck, Luck Duck, Luck Duck” to try and rally the Dodgers to come back from 3-5 down. They didn’t. Some believe the mislabeling of the goose cursed the team. It certainly felt like that the following year when the lowly Diamondbacks knocked us out in the same series.

As I said, American sport is addictive. It can get you hooked with just one live dose. I got sucked in while in Colorado 12 years ago. On a whim, a few friends and I went to watch the Rockies at Coors Field in Denver. I was bored at first, then interested, then enthralled and then when the Dodgers big bats started hitting, I was in for life. Well, more accurately, I was bored, then started drinking watery beer, then became interested, then full from eating an upside-down baseball hat full of nachos and two hotdogs, then drunk, then enthralled.

The next day, I woke up with an itch I had to scratch. I began reading furiously about this team in blue. I watched Ken Burns’ Baseball doco.

My Dodgers addiction was accelerated further by LA commentator Vin Skully. Vin came over with the Dodgers from Brooklyn in 1957 and didn’t hang up his mic until 2016 at 88. He passed away in 2022. That was a sad day. No one told a story like Vin.

Since then, I have been to see a bunch of baseball games at different parks, but it’s always been LA for me. A team like the Dodgers will get into your veins in many ways.

The kit is beautiful. How many Dodgers hats do you see on the heads of people walking around in New Zealand? I reckon about 1 in 1000 of those people actually follow the team.

The quality of the coverage, the huge crowds, the analysis. It all draws you in. Then, you learn the types of pitches, the strategy, the stats and the history. Each at bat is a battle within a battle within a battle. But really, it’s the players you learn to love, worship and care about. In the case of the 2024 Dodgers, you have some of the most likeable superstars ever to play the game.

The Dodgers shocked the world when they paid $700 million for Shohei Ohtani in late 2023, but that is starting to look like a bargain. He has brought the entire nation of Japan to the Dodgers, and he’s only batting this year. The man is a baseball unicorn and next year will once again be a starting pitcher. The scary thing about Shohei is that he is probably a better pitcher than a batter and will likely win MVP this year.

Freddie Freeman spent 12 years at the Atlanta Braves but now feels like the heart of LA. Then there’s Freddie’s best mate, one-time Red Sox legend Mookie Betts1, who is now at shortstop and has the most incredible set of skills. But my favourite player is Kiké Hernandez. He left LA for Boston and then came back to the ecstasy of Dodgers’ fans. Hernandez is the definition of a post-season clutch. Most players freak out when the games become important but Kiké goes better in October than the rest of the year. When LA won the NLDS against the dirty Padres, he was asked by the bowtie-wearing baseball brain Ken Rosenthal why the Dodgers are different this season than the last few. Kiké checked to make sure the broadcast was going out live, and answered: “Because of the fact we don’t give a fuck!”

Very Dodgers!

On the Yankees you have the superstar Aaron Judge, who hit 58 home runs this season to Ohtani’s 54. This is the first World Series ever where two players have hit over 50 home runs in the regular season. Like Shohei, he will likely win MVP for his league this year. That will be the first time two MVPs have played in the World Series, ever. The Yankees also have Juan Soto, the superstar who hit the go-ahead homer to get the Yankees into the World Series and a bunch of other kick-arse dudes like designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton, short stop Anthony Volpe and pitcher Luis Gil. This is a World Series packed with superstars.

So, here we go. The first two games will be played at Dodger Stadium. Then, everyone will fly in their teams’ private jets for five-and-a-half hours to New York to play the next three at Yankee Stadium. Then, if needed, they will fly back to LA for games 6 and 7.

The Dodgers have won the World Series in 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988 and 2020. The Yankees have 27 World Series Titles, most recently in 2009. The Dodgers are slightly favoured at this stage. Los Angeles Dodgers: -125 (bet $10 to win $18 total). New York Yankees: +105 (bet $10 to win $20.50 total).

This makes me very nervous as we don’t have much pitching.

Here’s a confusing run down on the odds.

Maybe the passing of Fernando Valenzuela this week will be the difference for LA. The focus of “Fernandomania” in 1981, when he won the 1981 Cy Young and the Rookie of the Year award on the way to the Dodgers winning the World Series, Valezuela had arguably the most incredible start to a professional career of any athlete in any sport. The team are wearing a little 34 on their uniforms. In a game where teams play each year for real at the Field Of Dreams, ghosts can’t be completely factored out in this series.

In conclusion, I wish I never went to the baseball all those years ago in Colorado. I wish I had said no. Imagine all the time I could have spent with my family instead of with a foreign sports team. All the productive things I could have achieved in my life. Imagine if I had put that energy into my friends, work, or sports teams who actually play in my city. The knowledge I could hold about good, honest Kiwi teams. Knowledge I could use and talk about on the radio. Imagine supporting a team I could go and watch live without travelling 10,500km.

Don’t be like me. Follow rugby, league, cricket or netty.

Don’t go anywhere near American sports.

Having said that: “LET’S FUCKING GO DODGERS!!!!!!!!”

Give ’Em A Taste of Kiwi.

Love MH

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