I had the opportunity to watch two different baseball games being broadcast tonight. And it clarified something I ponder occasionally. The first game was the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Kansas City Royals. My dad grew up a Cardinals fan, and passed down the fondness to me. I almost took the team's consistency and character for granted as a team who showed up and had enormous pride in rewarding their fans for their loyalty and class. And the Royals? I didn't think of them often, but I traveled to Kansas City on a Midwest road trip and visited Kauffman Stadium because I liked watching live sports and baseball tickets are usually a cheap fix. And I fell in love with the stadium, for there was not a bad view from any seat available. Nosebleeds were irrelevant for the paupers could see the action as well as the princes. But as for the team itself, I didn't know any of the players very well beforehand and was not very attached after watching them play. Despite winning a world series in the 21st century, the Royals did not traditionally field a very competitive team.
But I liked the field and made return trips with my dad because it was so pleasant to watch a game there. And this past year, the Royals actually made an effort to spend money on signing talented players for meeting their weaknesses and needs NOW, rather than selling off their talent to other teams and using the team only to develop prospects over the long term. It was exciting and different, and the Royals are actually winning more than losing this year.
The Cardinals are a mess. It hurts my heart to watch them play, because their stars are getting older and while they are consistent performers, it is turning towards being bad more than it is being good. The young talent is still green and inconsistent, and it is awkward for me to watch them. Because I remember when the team and its stars were good, and I don't recognize the newcomers for who they might become.
The Royals's starting pitcher, Michael Wacha, bounced around the league and recent years, but was best known as a key player for the Cardinals in their glory years. And he was haunting his former team by pitching to contact with a loopy delivery which dropped pitches into the strike zone and getting efficient outs on few pitches. And the Cardinals starter, Andre Pallante, was not doing that, throwing a lot of pitches before getting weak contact and few strikeouts, trying not to give up the slim 2-1 lead. As soon as he left the game in the fifth inning at just over 100 pitches, I knew the Cardinals were going to lose. The St.Louis relief pitchers did not offer comfort, but additional stress. It was as if the cross state teams had changed their stars and fates by taking on each other's legacy of "great striving" and "good talent, bad chemistry, minimal worries." And indeed, my assessment was correct. The Royals did not make mistakes, but took advantage of the Cardinals's errors and weaknesses to make it a no-doubter.
I then changed the game over to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates at the Los Angeles Dodgers. And I had a different experience with inevitabilities. As mentioned above, I grew up having the Cardinals be my default team. But then I got distracted from sports for a while and did not keep up with that roster. When I started to get back into watching baseball, I went to Indianapolis Indians games at Victory Field. The names both respectively were questionable in execution, though understandable in their intent. The Indianapolis team was affiliated with the Pirates, who shared a MLB National League division as the Cardinals. The Indians were at a AAA level and we're the reserves for the professional Pirates team to replace any injured players or provide an active practice for slumping or recovering big leaguers. And I felt the same way about Victory Field as I did about Kauffman Stadium, in that there was not a bad seat available in the park. And I began to become more invested in these reserve players who were so close to being in the MLB if they could hit a hot streak of performance. Being at that level is slightly infuriating for the players and the audience, because good players shouldn't stick around for long and therefore roster changes in quality according to the Pirates's needs.
In the other hand, I get to see professional talent trying their best out on the field to work themselves out of this job day in and day out. It brought me the chagrin of becoming invested in Will Craig as a minor leaguer, before he got called up and made one of the most foolish plays in MLB history and was cut from the team to play overseas. But currently, I love watching the Indians' third baseman, Malcom Nunez, who is an excellent defensive fielder.
But back to the Pirates and Dodgers game. I love most every one of the Pirates players because I have gotten to see many of them develop into an exciting young team. But the Pirates have been criticized for being an organization who does not spend money and go for signing other stars, preferring to develop their own talent and it has led to them relying on luck and timing to have a good team. The Dodgers are the opposite of that ethic, and will absolutely pay for the good players of other teams to create an embarrassment of talent on the field. This drive doesn't always directly translate into results, but it does provide depth and options for how to fix issues once such problems are identified.
But the Pirates have gotten lucky on many of their developing stars, who are inexperienced, but very promising and fun for me to watch. Paul Skenes, was the #1 draft pick last year and has been the most exciting pitcher to watch in the league. He tends to be aggressive and creative in trying to outplay most every batter he faces. And he struck out Shohei Ohtani, perhaps the most talented and famous player in modern history, twice. Skenes gave up 4 runs, but those runs weren't on total mistake pitches, but very good adjustments by the Dodgers and bad luck on a ball that bounced strangely in the outfield and allowed two runners to score.
It was a different kind of experienced inevitability, when a young and talented team compete against a team whose players are capable of extraordinary efforts and are managed to that level. There were two major defensive leaping catches made by Dodger players which would have resulted in hits and runs against some other teams. And there were two plays where the Dodgers demonstrated excellent reflexes and throws to cut off any Pirate hopes for an upset.
Sometimes you can beat yourself by not being in good shape to compete, and sometimes you can even be in good shape and on your best day still not escape being overshadowed by another competitor who has access to better resources and talent.
I felt more pleasure in watching the Pirates than the Cardinals, but don't think I deserted the bandwagon of my childhood. Instead, over time, I discovered that I seem to have built more of an investment in the passengers on the Pirates's ship, because I have gotten to watch them grow in their journey. I don't understand where the Cardinals's organization is, because its aims and decisions are unrecognizable to me. But I think the Pirates's leadership is stubborn enough to try to keep its current crew together and I hope to see those players become treasured.
