Posted by Os Davis in baseball, video | 0 Comments
Rangers vs. Giants World Series: The future is here
Well, welcome to the future: the San Francisco Giants (!) and Texas Rangers (!!!!) will meet in the 2010 World Series, thereby giving the first World Series title ever to one of these entities, snapping a half-century long deprivation of such, and eliminating the possibility of using either squad to represent far-flung o-so-strange science-fiction futures.
Like the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates to which BuckBokai devoted an earlier entry, the Giants and Rangers are seeking to break historically notable runs of futility. In fact, the vanquished team in 2010 goes home with the second-longest active run of World Series futility. Reads the all-time list:
– Chicago Cubs: 102 years (1908-present)
– Chicago White Sox: 88 years (1917-2005)
– Boston Red Sox: 86 years (1918-2004)
– Pittsburgh Pirates: 73 years (1887-1960)
– Brooklyn Dodgers: 65 years (1890-1955)
– Cleveland: 62 years (1948-present)
– New York/San Francisco Giants: 53 years (1957-present)
– Washington Senators II/Texas Rangers: 49 years (1961-present)
– Houston Astros: 48 years (1962-present)
– San Diego Padres: 41 years (1969-present)
– Seattle Pilots/Milwaukee Brewers: 41 years (1969-present)
Adding further wackiness to the incipient plot is that the “San Francisco Giants” have never taken a World Series, having been turned away by the mighty New York Yankees in 1962, later falling in a sweep to the Oakland A’s in the “Earthquake Series” of 1989, and giving up a California Angels comeback in game seven in 2002.
Look, here’s ESPN’s Jim Caple last year, attempting to describe the pre-2004 Simmons-esque angst of Giants fandom with a Sheckleyan morbidity for the future just one year before the apocalyptic vision may be blown away:
“The Cuban Missile Crisis [a particular favorite of parallel-Earth storytellers] began the same day Willie McCovey lined out to Bobby Richardson in the bottom of the ninth inning to end the 1962 World Series. I was nine months old at the time. Fortunately for the world, the missile crisis ended more happily than the World Series did for Giants fans. But had we all been killed in nuclear Armageddon, the San Francisco Giants still would have as many world championships in my lifetime as they do now.
“As all Giants fans know too well, they haven’t won the World Series since moving to San Francisco in 1958. Thus, with the Giants leading the National League West by two games, I’m hoping for the best and bracing for the worst.”
Congratulations to both the Giants and Rangers for ascending to the big stage in 2010. All BuckBokai wants to know is: What happened to those champion Florida Marlins?