The sixth inning of Game 4 of the World Series found San Francisco in a bind. They had just tied the game at four runs apiece in the previous inning, but they needed to take a lead. They faced the immovable force of Kansas City’s back of the bullpen starting the seventh inning and the ugly prospect of falling behind 3-1 in this best-of-seven-series. Pablo Sandoval batted with two outs and the bases loaded. On the first pitch, he lined a hit into centerfield, driving in two runs and keeping San Francisco on its feet. They did more than stay on their feet, though, and exploded to an 11-4 lead, rolling into Game 5.
Baseball is not broken. It is not in crisis. It does not need to change. What the Giants and Royals have given us this World Series is the purest form of baseball that we have seen in some time, and I thank both teams for showing viewers how great it truly is. Baseball at its best, as it should be played, is hard to beat. It has been attacked from all directions as the sick old man of sports dragging its feet and fighting any change to keep up with our fast-paced world. But from what we have seen this World Series, baseball does not need to change.
Yes, the game could be quicker. Yes, regular season games played in mid-July heat tend to drag on. But if Major League officials look to compete with the popularity of football by changing the way baseball is played, they will be gravely mistaken. At this time in America, it is impossible for any sport to compete for attention with the NFL, so MLB needs to stop trying.
Baseball is baseball. It does not have the mass appeal that the NFL has garnered in the last decade, but that is okay. Hopefully, officials watching the World Series now know to take their hands off of the game and enjoy it. This series was truly something to watch.
In one of the most exciting runs of baseball in recent memory, these seven games brought baseball back to baseball. There were no flash-in-the-pan moments to interrupt dull stretches, no big plays coming out of nowhere. The flow of pressure that carried through the series whisked the games along in a prolonged and unabated line of anticipation.
Action reigned. Base runners constantly threatened leads. Batters put the ball in play without fail. Each pitch meant something. What is better than knowing at a specific moment that something will happen, that the course of a season and the joy of a generation will be determined, and to have to wait for it? To sit and wait with held breath and hands trembling for the pitch of reckoning to come is the essence of competition, and the Royals and Giants brought that back to baseball.
Baseball inhales and exhales with action. It runs on momentum and shifts on a dime. Throughout the series in key situations, broadcaster Joe Buck refrained, “The wheels are turning,” and that’s exactly how it felt. Before our eyes, we could see and feel the preparation for a fight. Like two scrappy fighters ready for one last round, both teams constantly tried anything they could do to pull it out. And we got to watch it play out. We watched it in Game 4, and we watched it in every game.
In that sixth inning of Game 4, the crowd in San Francisco could feel a turning point of the series. Either the offense would fail and tragically miss this opportunity, or they would take a lead and propel the team to a desperate win. Each pitch was its own event. Each had its own moment, with anticipation clinging on.
As Joaquin Arias and Gregor Blanco each reached base, the momentum began to churn. Joe Panik’s perfect sacrifice bunt put both runners in scoring position, and after an intentional walk and a force out at home, the crowd was ready to burst. And yet there were two outs. This could all be for naught. The next pitch could bring all of their hope and celebration crashing down. Sandoval’s at-bat, they knew, would determine their season, and that moment could happen on any pitch. But it was on the first pitch that Sandoval came through with a single to drive in two runs and put the Giants ahead. The slow buildup over six at-bats, each Giant able to chip away at the unraveling Royals, squeezed the audience into a cocoon of intensity that popped with Sandoval’s laser to centerfield.
It was Madison Bumgarner who stole the show this series by pitching in three games, one of which was a complete game shut-out, and by muting the Kansas City bats in the final five innings of Game 7 while pitching on two-days’ rest. Yet with a 3-2 lead and two outs in the ninth inning, as if gracing us with one last nugget of excitement to remember the series by, Bumgarner let Alex Gordon loft a single into centerfield that, in skipping by San Francisco’s centerfielder, allowed Gordon to reach third base.
Kansas City had been dead at that point. Celebration was on the Giants’ lips. But with one last spark the drama continued, and Gordon gave Kansas City the chance to do the impossible. The impossible did not come, and Salvador Perez popped up to end the game and give San Francisco their third World Series in five years.
Baseball is years removed from being America’s pastime, but who cares? The Giants especially gave us the chance to see baseball at its best. And yet this World Series did not help the popularity of baseball. Television ratings continued to drop, and there was little buzz in the media. But it did show us that there is nothing wrong with the game itself. There is no reason to change its ways, because its ways are not broken.
