Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Tick tock motherfuckers!

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Consistently wrong since 2002

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

This fight is for everything.

No Justins, No Peace

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Sports / World Series Game 6 Open Thread

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150Comments

  6. 6.

    TriassicSands

    Completely neutral comment on World Series.

    I’m not rooting for either team and I don’t care at all who wins. (That would be true no matter which two teams were in the World Series.)

  10. 10.

    delk

    I’m a native south-sider and once the cubs weren’t going to get swept I lost interest.

    But, I actually and honestly felt sad for a cubs fan I met. I just spent 7 days in Illinois Masonic Hospital (not all that far from Wrigley). Near the end of my stay I got a new roommate. He got tickets to one of the games to take his father, a life-long cubs fan to one of the games.They both live in some small town in Virginia.

    As they were paying their bar bill to walk over and get in line for the game, he had a stroke and he went to the ER and not the game. Thankfully it was minor but in addition to his father, he was traveling with his wife, their teenage daughter, and his mother. They only were planing to stay one night and fly home.

  11. 11.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    Baseball in November is ridiculous. The playoffs were too long. We should have been done with this two weeks ago. Also, all kids should already have left my lawn. Which is dead.

    But go Cubs.

  12. 12.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

    Baseball in November is ridiculous. The playoffs were too long. We should have been done with this two weeks ago.

    Indeed. That was the real point of my ‘Mr. November’ comment – there shouldn’t be a ‘Mr. November’ in baseball, unless it’s played somewhere south of the border.

  14. 14.

    BruceFromOhio

    Completely neutral thread

    The hell you say.

    Listening to crickets, baseball, and jazz, with the windows open on the day after Hallowe’en. What isn’t all askew and askance these days, tell me about it, I’d like to see.

  15. 15.

    Cacti

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

    Baseball in November is ridiculous. The playoffs were too long. We should have been done with this two weeks ago. Also, all kids should already have left my lawn. Which is dead.

    But go Cubs.

    Agree.

    If MLB wants expanded playoffs, they need to shorten the regular season a bit.

  16. 16.

    redshirt

    @delk: That is a bummer. But odds are there’s always some terribly tragic event happening at moments like this, when the focus of history is turned upon one event. I think I read something about a long lived Red Sox fan dying before game 4 of the world series started.

  17. 17.

    redshirt

    @Cacti: They’re lucky they haven’t paid for it in cold weather. I remember the 1997 Indians – Marlins series that featured games in Cleveland in the low 30’s or maybe even colder.

  20. 20.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    In the future the World Series will be played two years after the season starts. And presidential campaigns will last fourteen years.

    And yes, the correct response is “This one already has”.

  22. 22.

    Lizzy L

    But odds are there’s always some terribly tragic event happening at moments like this, when the focus of history is turned upon one event.

    About suffering they were never wrong,
    The Old Masters; how well, they understood
    Its human position; how it takes place
    While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
    How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
    For the miraculous birth, there always must be
    Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
    On a pond at the edge of the wood:
    They never forgot
    That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
    Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
    Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
    Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
    In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
    Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
    Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
    But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
    As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
    Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
    Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
    had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

    W. H. Auden “Musee de Beaux Arts”

  23. 23.

    patroclus

    Jake, A TCU grad, is on the hill tonight, and the Cubbies have given him an early 3-0 lead.

  24. 24.

    BruceFromOhio

    But odds are there’s always some terribly tragic event happening at moments like this, when the focus of history is turned upon one event.

    The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
    Of the big lake they called ‘gitche gumee’
    The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
    When the skies of November turn gloomy

  25. 25.

    raven

    @Lizzy L: Years ago at an Illinois Michigan State football game and official spotted the ball after a played and dropped dead. Hi family noted that he died doing what he loved.

  26. 26.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @redshirt: My wife’s grandpa’s ashes were interred the day the Red Sox won game 3 in 2004. He immigrated from Scotland to Maine as a young man after their early successes.

    After Boston won game 4 my wife (Worcester born and raised) joked that it of course would never happen until her favorite grandparent was six feet under.

  29. 29.

    patroclus

    @raven: A TCU head coach, Jim Pittman, died on the sidelines in a game against Baylor in 1971. This was even before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.

  30. 30.

    raven

    @patroclus:
    The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
    You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
    You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
    If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

  31. 31.

    redshirt

    @ThresherK (GPad): Dang. So he died Game 1 or thereabouts?

    At least he got to see them come back against the Yankees. On the ground at Fenway, that was the crazier celebration. The WS was almost a formality after that (especially after going up 2-0).

  32. 32.

    Schlemazel

    @redshirt:
    Particularly since the money demands prime-time games now. I hated when I was a kid & the games were played while I was in school. It was a simpler world & better in some ways. But this insistence on November games after sunset means there will be ice delays and muscle injuries from cold eventually.
    Baseball is a wonderful game, designed for the leisurely pace of Summer, not the frigid nights of November.

  35. 35.

    redshirt

    @Schlemazel: If they keep pushing this deeper into November, eventually all stadiums will have retractable domes, or they’ll play the series at a neutral warm weather site like the Super Bowl. Which would be terrible.

  37. 37.

    Schlemazel

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    Love that! Thanks.

    Though I am having a hard time caring about these two. If the Cubs win it destroys their entire reason for being. If Cleveland wins it rewards that logo. I am just grateful it is not one of those damn coastal teams that get all the press

  39. 39.

    BruceFromOhio

    If the Cubs win it destroys their entire reason for being.

    What are these words? CHI won more games in 2016 than any other team.
    That’s a pretty good reason right there. Perhaps they choose to do it again.

    ETA: In the next 100 years.

  46. 46.

    Schlemazel

    @BruceFromOhio:
    The Tribe was the pride of the American side
    Coming back from some game in Toronto
    As the ball clubs go, it was bigger than most
    With a crew and good captain well seasoned
    Concluding some terms with a couple of arm firms
    When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
    And later that night when the cub’s dingers rang
    Could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

    I am trying to come up with similar for Chicago but the words are not flowing yet

  47. 47.

    redshirt

    @Schlemazel: Yep. The entire Red Sox personality changed after they won in 2004, and winning two more has only cemented it. I wouldn’t change anything, I guess, but there’s something special about being the hard luck loser. The difference with the Cubs is they haven’t even sniffed success for decades, whereas the Sox had been contenders from time to time.

  48. 48.

    JPL

    @raven: Much ado about nothing, but normally my antenna is faster than cable services.

    When I’m talking on the phone with another Falcons fan during the game, she says don’t tell me..

  52. 52.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Schlemazel: Yeah no big preference either but now I keep finding myself rooting for the Cubs, I think a combination of the fact that now they’re underdogs and then what Larkspur said above, I grew up as a Giants fan.

  55. 55.

    frosty

    @redshirt:

    Yep. The entire Red Sox personality changed after they won in 2004, and winning two more has only cemented it.

    I’m a Cubs fan just for the Series unless the same thing doesn’t happen in Chicago. Red Sox fans in Baltimore … they ended up just as obnoxious as Yankees fans. (Flame on!)

  57. 57.

    hueyplong

    Liking the Giants references. I left day 3 of the California bar exam 2 hours early so as to see the first pitch of a last place Giants game in 1984. Three rings during the Obama administration is a reward. I have no problem seeing the Cubs make a similar trip to the long-awaited promised land though, as noted before, it would be better if G Will dropped dead before they actually won out.

    I’m nothing if not gracious.

  58. 58.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    Don’t forget, I live on the frozen tundra. The hometown team here has canceled opening day for snow since they moved outside & have had to do snow removal on opening day. in 1991 we received 20 inches of snow on Oct. 31. It would be a crime to play important games under that sort of weather.

  63. 63.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @hueyplong: What I see with really hard core Giants fans (including family members) is that once the Giants lose, what really matters more than anything is that the Dodgers lose also. Cubs, whatever, fine, as long as it’s not the Dodgers.

  64. 64.

    Schlemazel

    @frosty:
    Winners fans are always obnoxious in the world of big time sports. The people who have the least right make the loudest boasts. But that changes when they lose, notice how nobody outside their division complains about Cowboy fans like they did a few years back.

  65. 65.

    debbie

    @raven:

    I remember being at a season opener in the mid-80s (Yankees / Baltimore) and freezing. There were even snow flurries during the game.

  69. 69.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    I never said they SHOULD play in those conditions. Its stupid to play baseball in that weather. They only do it for the money. The games would be improved if they cut out the first and last month & played in the right weather. But from GA I don’t suppose you see it that way.

  70. 70.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @raven: My brother is pretty much neutral about LA itself, the place, but his hatred of the Dodgers is shockingly wide and deep.

  74. 74.

    hueyplong

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Exactly right. Once LA is eliminated so as to keep their magic number at 1988, we shake it off. But remember, since SF finally won a ring in 2010, this year’s Cub series is the only postseason series they have lost. They won 11 in a row (counting the one-offs against PITT in 2014 and NYM this year). So it’s pretty unseemly for us to whine about bad luck lately.

    As for Cardinals fans, the gripe most NL fans have about them is that they think they invented fandom and sportsmanship. That’s kind of irritating. Other than that, I don’t mind the team.

  76. 76.

    patroclus

    @redshirt: Yeah, the Red Sox were never the Cubbies. Boston was more of a team that got to the threshold a few times (1967, 1975, 1986) but could never get over the hump and win the Big One. The Cubbies haven’t even been to the threshold since 1945 and hardly a man is now alive who remembers that fateful day and year. The Cubs could even lose this Series and their allure will continue to grow until they win it. And In Theo we Trust!

  77. 77.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @redshirt: No, he had passed on a few months before. I forget when, but the cremation and interment and getting the family together at the Maine plot from away took some time.

  79. 79.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @hueyplong: Mind you I dimly remember all this first-hand but a long time ago when I was a kid, I never really kept up even following as an adult. A long time ago as in McCovey and Mays and the Alou brothers.

    Out of practice with the rivalry stuff, nowadays I just enjoy a good game.

  80. 80.

    Another Scott

    @Schlemazel: I agree that they need to do something about the starting and ending dates. A seemingly simple solution is to have more double-headers if they need the same number of games and an extended playoff season. I remember always enjoying seeing double-headers as a kid.

    Mid-April start, mid-October end of the 7th game of the WS (if needed) worked in the mid-60s.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    opiejeanne

    @redshirt: In April 2007 it snowed in Cleveland and the Mariners/Indians series was wiped out by the storm, 4 days in a row. The next series Angels/Indians games were moved to Milwaukee. There were shots of baseball players romping in the snow after the game was cancelled and the move was announced. Milwaukee sold tickets for $10 each and a few thousand came out to see the games.

  85. 85.

    Schlemazel

    @BruceFromOhio:
    Oh jeeze, I’m sorry dude. Have you thought about therapy? :)
    I used to be a Vikings fan, back in the day they were losing Stuperbowls. Never got over the whiny fans who were just so sure the NFL had it in for them.

  89. 89.

    CaseyL

    Football’s always been the game I love. The only time I really got into baseball was the summer of 2001, when the Seattle Mariners were hotter than hot, winning more games than anyone else. Got totally into the strategy and mechanics. Wasn’t at all bored by the slow pace, because I was fascinated by the back-end stuff.

    The Mariners wound up going nowhere that year – I think they didn’t make it out of the first round of playoffs – right around the time the rest of the year turned to shit for everyone.

    So here I am, watching the World Series, and enjoying it but no longer conversant with the back-end stuff. It’s nice to watch a game without too much emotional involvement, though I am rooting for the Cubs to finally end their long drought.

  90. 90.

    redshirt

    @CaseyL: At this point football has become so stilted and humorless, baseball games do have more action. At least there’s something always going on. Even if it’s a beach ball in centerfield.

  95. 95.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Back when I was watching Giants games in Candlestick, if anyone came from the future and told me I’d be watching a World Series someday with players named Coco Crisp and Carlos Santana I’d think they were just having fun with me.

  98. 98.

    raven

    @Steeplejack (tablet): Oh man, I was coaching a kids soccer team years ago. I heard the mommies talking about how, all of the sudden, their kids were spitting like mad. I realized that my baseball/softball spitting had spilled over into soccer!

  99. 99.

    Schlemazel

    @CaseyL:
    I love the pace of baseball, the simple strategy and counters and the fact that just about every game I see something I have not seen before. I used to love football for the sheer power and the man on man battles with their own subtlety. But between the NCAA, NFL and CTE I can’t watch it any more. Hockey is a great game because it combines the best attributes of both at a speed that is mind bending when well played.

  101. 101.

    frosty

    @debbie:

    I remember being at a season opener in the mid-80s (Yankees / Baltimore) and freezing. There were even snow flurries during the game.

    If it was in Baltimore, I was there. I remember one snow flurry game. And the morning of one of the ’79 Series games we had flurries.

    Terrible weather for baseball, especially pitchers trying to get a grip on the ball.

  105. 105.

    raven

    @redshirt: I stopped when I realized it.

    eta There is a guy who comes to the bakery often. One day he told me that my coaching his son in 4th grade hoops contributed greatly to him becoming a high school coach!

  107. 107.

    raven

    @Adam L Silverman: Ha, my bride is always wanting to fuss about it. The best thing she did was, when I turned 60, she flew my buddies in from Berkely and Tucson. They just knocked on my door in the mid-afternoon. When I answered it I almost fainted.

  108. 108.

    CaseyL

    @redshirt: Oh, I agree that pro football is becoming unwatchable, too. I used to watch every game I could, whether I cared about the teams or not, because I loved the game.

    Then came the concussion issue. I didn’t watch football for years after that story broke. Only came back to it when the Seahawks caught fire. So I watch, and root root root for the home team, and feel guilty about it.

  110. 110.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @redshirt:

    I have a dear friend in Boston who has been an avid Red Sox fan almost her entire life. As she and her husband were leaving Fenway after the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 — literally as they were walking to their transportation — she got a phone call that her father had taken his own life. Euphoria and the most horrifying, deepest tragedy within the space of not more than 30 minutes.

  113. 113.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Schlemazel: Therapy comes in many forms, and yes, I have thought about it. Every Sunday from September through December, every year. Thanks for asking. Not much whining here, just a smoldering disappointment, and a dim realization that really shitty football is better than no football. The salve of NBA and MLB wins work wonders.

  116. 116.

    Schlemazel

    @BruceFromOhio:
    I never got basketball. Went to games with the band in high school and was only excited because it was kids I knew. Years later my kids played youth basketball and I dreaded going to games. Have been given tickets to Timberwolf games a couple of times, went once and couldn’t wait for it to be over, gave them to people who enjoy the game every other time. Its good for the people who like it but it misses me. I am sure many people feel the same way about hockey as I do about squeekball..

  117. 117.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    A few years ago, my Canadian cousin’s wife turned 60. Dave arranged with dozens of kindergarten friends, remote (Yukon) relatives, and others from Rosemary’s past to just show up at their home in Owen Sound, ON. Their daughter flew to Toronto from Victoria, BC, where she lives. I drove to the Toronto airport from Atlanta, picked up Susan, and we drove to Owen Sound. I showed up at the back door, just walked into the kitchen. Rosemary was amazed. Susan walked through the front door and walked into the kitchen from the other direction. Rosemary had absolutely no idea. If Dave never does another thing in his life, he deserves accolades for organising a great surprise party for his wife. These things are not easy to pull off.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: We did that for my old man’s 75th, I was already in Phoenix but, when my sis from LA walked in, he broke down in severe tears. We realized then and there that we had to tell him what was up.

  120. 120.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @redshirt:
    @BruceFromOhio:
    @Schlemazel:

    Brutal is the word. But she remains a great RS fan (and baseball generally — she’s rooting for the Cubs, with me). She’s good at separating the joyous event from the tragic context. I’m not very good at doing that, so I admire it.

  121. 121.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @raven:

    “I can catch more balls with this than a stupid glove!”

    Seriously, WTF was that guy doing? If he’s “working” the game, he should know better.

  123. 123.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    It’s important to know your audience. Some people love being surprised, others really hate it. I’m of the latter persuasion — I’ve had one or two surprise parties thrown in my honour over the years, and it was all I could do to remain civil, let alone fake enthusiasm.

  125. 125.

    raven

    @Adam L Silverman: It was 7 years ago. We did have a good time, I dragged them to a Georgia games against some lower division team. Even then they had never seen anything like what goes on at and SEC game.

  126. 126.

    Villago Delenda Est

    If the Cubbies can keep the lead, the world will come to an end during the bottom of the ninth tomorrow night.

  130. 130.

    CaseyL

    @SiubhanDuinne: Separating joyous from tragic is… well, in your friend’s case, particularly brutal. It’d take me a long time to be able to do it. (Having a mordant sense of humor helps.)

  132. 132.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Villago Delenda Est: What are these words about, I do not understand. These are my peeps, and come what may the sun WILL rise, so just cut it out with this existential apocalyptic seventh-game, ninth inning scenario thing. Earlier, it was the meteor.

  134. 134.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @CaseyL:

    There are always patterns to be found, and signs and symbols to be recognised — if you’re inclined to give them any weight.

    My mother died on October 26, 1975. She was a Chicagoan (suburban) every minute of her life, and it so happened that one of her favourite Chicagoland icons was the elephant “Ziggy” at Brookfield Zoo. Well, Ziggy died the same day my mother did (or possibly the day after; he was on the front pages of the Chicago papers that ran my mom’s obit) — and he was born in 1917, as was she. So, twins, pretty much.

    As for my Boston friend, I know this time of year is hard for her (also her mother’s either birthday or death anniversary is right around now, too), but she’s a sensible woman and I don’t think she ascribes any meaning to baseball and the fortunes of the Sox.

  137. 137.

    Slaughter

    I do not understand bringing Chapman in with a five-run lead in the 7th. He might be needed tomorrow.

  139. 139.

    patroclus

    Into the 9th! Still 7-2. Lookin good!

    (I like long hair, but, uh, Clevinger needs a haircut).

    Rizzo put it away with a 2-run homer!! 9-2!

  141. 141.

    redshirt

    @M. Bouffant: It makes a ton of logical sense, but it will never happen, simply because no one would likely ever break a record ever again at anything in baseball. And that’s a central dynamic of the sport, the fusion at the center of every game: The records.

    And so, the seasoned will never be shortened. With coming global warming, it will more likely be extended a few weeks.

  142. 142.

    opiejeanne

    @frosty: Which fans are most obnoxious depends on where you watch. At Angels stadium the Redsox fans became unbelievably awful while the Yankees fans became a lot quieter, after the Sox won that WS in 2004. People who’d never set foot in Boston would get drunk and start fights. During the early 80s Yankees games were like that, so bad we stopped going to games that Yankees played in Anaheim. We had season tickets and either sold or gave away those tickets.
    In 2003 the Athletics’ opening day game was against the Angels, and Giants fans came to Oakland just so they could boo Erstad because they were still sore about the 2002 WS.

  149. 149.

    AnotherBruce

    @CaseyL: My main gripe about football is that it’s getting too big and fast. The concussion issue is the main one. But the fact is, there are so many injuries that teams are usually not playing their best players and the quality of play suffers. Also there is and always has been a dearth of competent quarterbacks for as long as I’ve been watching the game.

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