IT'S MORE AMERICAN THAN WORLDLY!

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, it's World Series time! The question is, what is the World Series really and truly about? The American and National League champions that qualify to play in it have worked long and hard to participate. The winner is the champion  and gets good money and a valuable ring. What's both unfortunate and misleading about it is that the World Series isn't really about the world at all. What the World Series is about is the American ego and pride of reigning victoriously over a significant domain.

Throughout the history of baseball, the professional leagues, be they the American Association, the National League, or even the early Player's League, played for championships. That's as American as Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr and Billy Martin!

Back in October of 1903, Henry Killilea, owner of the club called both the Boston Americans and the Pilgrims, and Barney Dreyfus, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, agreed to play a best of nine game series for                                             the championship of the United States. They did exactly that and, as the late great Tiger's announcer Ernie Harwell would put it, the Bostons won five games to three. The great Boston pitcher Cy Young (whose full name was Denton True Young) didn't win a game until his third start. The first man to hit a home run was Jimmy Sebring, a left-handed hitter for the Pirates. The first batter to hit a homer over the fence was lefty Patsy Dougherty of the "Bostons." As for the Pirates great shortstop Honus Wagner, like the Cardinals’ Stan Musial and the Red Sox’ Ted Williams in the 1946 Series, Wagner was disappointing due to injury, batting only 6 for 22. Once the championship series was complete, someone, most believe it was the New York World Telegram, first called it “The World Series.”

Once the series was over and the American League franchise had won, the National League's John McGraw of the New York Giants boycotted any possible 1904 series on the grounds that the new American League (which was formed largely by raiding players from the National League) wasn't equal to the National League and ought to be ignored. Thus, by 1905 the idea of a World Series was so powerful that not even the influential and pugnacious McGraw could afford to walk away from it.

As for the Rangers and the Diamondbacks, two teams that lost over 100 games just the year before last, they've worked hard and well enough to be champions. Bruce Bochy of the Texas Rangers and Torey Lovullo  of the Arizona Diamondbacks have creditably earned the championship of the United States and Canada, because they've had no opportunity to take on the whole world!

I'm convinced that it's the World Series because Americans see ourselves as the most outstanding people and society on earth.  To both our benefit and our misfortune, we're wired to believe that anything we value and love is precisely what the whole world ought to value and love for its own sake.

Our politics, our religion, and mostly our gold is ours to behold and value. Many Americans insist that when God created the whole world, He was at his very best when He created Americans’ brains, minds, and souls.

So, there you have it! The Championship Series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks is the World Series because we're more worldly than the whole world!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY