FanPost

The World Series resumes today in Surprise


The three Giants Royals fans most love to hate will not be participating in today’s resumption of the peculiarly scheduled 2014 World Series today in Surprise, Arizona.

Baseball’s last nine-game World Series before this one was in 1921, in the first of two successive battles in which the New York Giants successfully delayed the impending dark age of Yankee dominance, from which the blighted world may only now be fully emerging.

All previous World Series, however, even the 9-game affairs in 1903 and 1919-1921, were completed in the same year in which they began. The completions of some of them were delayed by weather, such as the 1911 Series with its one-week hiatus between Games 3 and 4, or by disaster, with Game 3 of the 1989 Series delayed ten days after an earthquake. But never before have two pennant winners resumed play after a winter’s delay, returning the following spring to determine a champion.

For those who may need a refresher after all this time, in our last episode before the break the Giants took a 4-3 Series lead, with Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval combining for five of the Giants’ eight hits and all three of their runs scored and Madison Bumgarner coming out of the bullpen to hold their tenuous lead for what may have seemed like forever.

But today is another day, and none of those three Giants will be appearing in Surprise for Game 8:

• Bumgarner, perhaps suffering the repercussions of a full 270 innings pitched between the regular season and the postseason so far, will be pitching in a practice game in Scottsdale, trying to regain his form for the 2015 season, which follows soon after the completion of the 2014 World Series. He has been declared ineligible for the resumption of the World Series in any case, after many Royals fans wrote to new Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, claiming that having to face that guy even three times in one Series just wasn’t fair, not to mention four. Manfred, who is well known for his opposition to the participation of superhumans and mutants in the major leagues, promptly acceded to their wishes, signaling a shift in executive procedure away from the establishment of blue-ribbon panels with unknown terms of operation and unknown criteria for success. Maybe now we’ll get that salary cap, too.


• In early March, Hunter Pence’s arm was broken by a pitched ball. Why Pence was fooling around in an exhibition game, exposing himself to unnecessary risk of injury instead of preparing for the resumption of the Series, is unclear, but he is well known for his generally unorthodox manner. And so the Giants must soldier on without him on the field, although he remains within earshot for pre-game, in-game, and post-game inspiration and remonstrance. He is also available for appearances at parades and other civic events.


• Much to the surprise of his many Bay Area fans, Pablo Sandoval was so aggrieved by his Gianthood that he chose to abandon his teammates while the outcome of the Series was still undecided and take his talents to the Back Bay. He has since revealed that all of the Giants are meanies and poopyheads except maybe for Pence, who is so weird that even he was unable to take offense. In a seven-part exposé published by Bleacher Report, Sandoval recounted that each member of the Giants’ family, from the front office to the training staff, was solely focused on a mission to make him miserable, and the recent championships just sort of happened by accident somewhere in there. Most telling of all, with so many personal slights to keep track of, he has no capacity remaining even to recall who Aubrey Huff is, even though they were on the same roster during three consecutive seasons. Poor Panda. We can only avail ourselves of the consolation that he is now in the company of that well-known model of professionalism and all-around good egg, Hanley Ramirez.

And so the Royals’ chances of overtaking the Giants’ one-game advantage in the Series are improved. Another thing: somehow Nori Aoki is starting for the other team, in left field instead of right; I don’t get how anything like that can happen in the middle of the freaking World Series, but whatever. Go Royals.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.