Under The Knife 10/28/20

Dodgers Win

First, congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2020 champions. No asterisk from me and a deserved winner of that hunk of metal.

There is a sadness that overwhelms me after that last pitch. Rogers Hornsby had the famous quote about what he did in the offseason, but this one more than most has me down. Joe Buck might remind me that The Masked Singer will be on instead of Game 7, but there’s really no replacing baseball.

There’s an election coming up and that’s important. There’s a pandemic that’s killed more people than live in Birmingham, Alabama this year and that’s important. Baseball, that’s not important, but deep in my heart? It is. It really is.

I know better than to put my own well being in what a team I have no control over does in a day. I grew up a Cubs fan and I can remember those losses, those painful losses, a callus growing over part of me, but still tender underneath. Since breaking up with the Cubs, that pain is gone, but so is some of the joy. I root for players. I root for teams where people I know work.

I root for baseball.

Tomorrow, I’ll have nothing to root for. Baseball is done for 2020, weird year that it was.

In some ways, I have to thank the Lords of Baseball for giving me 60 games, a weird bracket of playoffs that we should never do again, and a World Series matchup when I would have bet against it on July 4th. Good job to them for gettin this done and across the line.

We have no idea about 2021. The season is already in jeopardy. The world could be on fire by then. What we have is another season of baseball, one to remember. We have Randy Arozarena’s emergence. We have Clayton Kershaw shrugging his monkey off and eyeing the door. We have a low payroll team showing it can be done if you just trust the plan, but an acknowledgement that the plan might work against you at absolutely the wrong time.

Baseball, man. Isn’t it awesome?

Thanks to each and every one of you for taking this journey through a season with me. From the time I announced Under The Knife was coming back until this moment has been a ride. I thank you for trusting me, for giving me money to do this, and for taking the time each time I show up in your in-box to read. I’m not going anywhere — you’ll see me in your inbox regularly and I hope we can take this all the way into next season. A normal season.

But for now, 2020 is in the books. Today, I’m congratulating the Dodgers and the Rays for a great season, then I’m going to look into this bottle of Balcones and wonder when I might see my friend Baseball again.