Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani celebrates a win against the New York Mets in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, on Oct. 20, in Los Angeles.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
The business problem of sports isn’t attracting customers. If your TikTok is slick enough, you could start a league throwing rocks against a wall. The problem is getting your best product to market.
Now that individual athletes have overtaken teams as the main attraction, the century-old playoff model is no longer fit for purpose. Everybody says they love parity, but no one wants to watch the Columbus Whatshisnames versus the Anaheim Remindmeagains in the final.
Few have been as disadvantaged by this shift as Major League Baseball.
Who’s the best baseball player of the past 10 or 15 years? Mike Trout.
Where is he? God knows. California somewhere, I guess. Golfing, maybe. Or weeping.
Who’s the most successful player over the same period? Probably Jose Altuve, who plays on a team of cheating skunks.
That is the history of baseball since 2010 – an all-time player who’s barely recognizable, and an all-time team, the Houston Astros, that everyone despises. As a result, it’s been a long time since MLB had a great World Series on paper.
This is distinct from a great World Series, because once it’s over you can’t time travel back to the hours before Game 1 and tell people ‘You’re not gonna want to miss this.’ The matchup on paper is what matters.
This year, finally, baseball gets its great World Series a priori. The two biggest teams in baseball, featuring a half-dozen of the top players in baseball, including the guy who is probably going to end up as the greatest of them all.
If the people on Madison Avenue could fix the league, New York Yankees versus Los Angeles Dodgers beginning in L.A. on a Friday night is how they would fix it.
The white-hot core of this matchup is Shohei Ohtani.
If Ohtani had stayed with the Angels – or, worse, been convinced to decamp to the rolling goat rodeo that is the Toronto Blue Jays – baseball would have been much the poorer. We can admit that now.
The other day, I watched Ohtani do a series with GQ called 10 Essentials. This is where someone, usually an actor, details 10 products he can’t live without.
Most pick at least one ridiculous watch, a skin cream made of crushed dolphin molars and a pair of thousand-dollar flip flops. It’s a depressing display of vapid fin de siècle acquisitiveness.
Ohtani’s 10 things were all tools of his trade. Most were relatively cheap. One of his essentials was a cellphone. Not any particular available-to-celebs-only cellphone. Just a cellphone. Another was his favourite bat.
You hear a lot of talk about real professionals in sports. This is what one looks like in the wild.
Ohtani belonged somewhere where his talent could be broadcast to the largest possible audience.
He’s been the best player in baseball for at least four years, but distantly. He was a guy in highlight reels or used as a point of comparison on podcasts. Few saw him in regular, live action. So, weirdly, the coming week or two is Ohtani’s coming out to many.
If he plays anywhere close to as well in the World Series as he did in the Championship Series, he’s about to be bigger than whatever you think of as really, really big.
Led by Ohtani, the Dodgers’ lineup has carried its best-in-the-game pace into the playoffs.
Seven hitters have two home runs or more. The team is averaging six runs a game. Those are the same numbers that won the Texas Rangers last year’s championship.
Los Angeles also has the likeability factor. Between Ohtani’s shyness, Mookie Betts’s sunniness, manager Dave Roberts’s mid-inning affability, it’s easy to develop a sports crush on them. If only our teams were this charming. Maybe it’s the weather.
This isn’t to say that the Yankees are unlikeable. Over the years, New York has mastered the art of being hateable without being hateful. It helps that what was once the New York way – attempting to buy titles – has become everyone’s way.
Led by Aaron Judge, these Yankees are sympathetic enemy combatants.
Sure, they bought their way this far. Only the wretched Mets spend more on their roster. But unlike some others we could name, their stars are stars when it counts.
Instead of invoking visions of the Murderers’ Row, the Yankees have started throwing their way out of trouble.
You build regular-season teams with offence, but you win in the postseason with pitching.
Right now, the most important Yankees aren’t Judge or Juan Soto, but Carlos Rodón and Luke Weaver.
This is their key advantage over the Dodgers, who have been reduced to one viable starter (Yoshinobu Yamamoto). If this series goes any distance, the Dodgers will need to ride a bullpen that’s already thrown 50-per-cent more innings than their Yankee counterparts.
This is how it should be – not two shining examples of fully complemented sides. But two tired contingents, slugging it out exhaustedly to the last at-bat. Those are the conditions under which legends begin to present themselves.
If it’s been a while since the World Series was set up as best on best, it’s been even longer since a real boldface name won the finals MVP.
Where will Judge fit into Yankee history if he wins it this year? Up there with Reggie Jackson, and with the likes of Mickey Mantle in his sights.
What would it mean to Soto’s stature if he wins it? It makes him the second-most intriguing free agent in memory (after last year’s version).
And how about if Ohtani takes the honours? That doesn’t just make him the inarguable greatest ballplayer of his time. It puts baseball in the rarefied air of those leagues and sports capable of marrying the right man and the biggest moment.