A Ray of hope

Time now to thank that baseball team from Tampa, the four guys who hit home runs and the four other guys who struck out 18 New York Yankees and, what the heck, the guy named Kevin Kiermaier, who is the Tampa Bay Rays' peerless centerfielder and also a Fort Wayne boy from Bishop Luers High School.

They all beat back the Yankee horde last night, 7-5. Which evened their ALDS at a game apiece and gave some of us hope that we will not be faced with the unimaginable in the next round of the playoffs.

Which would be the Yankees, bastion of pinstriped privilege, playing the Houston Astros, bastion of cheating and gloating about it, in the ALCS.

I suppose the A's could still rally against the 'Stros, but they're down two-games-to-none now and it's not looking good. So realistically it's the Rays saving the day or no one.

If it's the latter, it would be a nightmare for those of us who value honor and rightness in our baseball, because it would compel us to choose between a team we despise and a team we loathe. It would be like asking us if we'd rather be drawn and quartered or disemboweled. It would be like locking us in a room and asking if we'd rather listen to A) "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro, or B) "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace.

Either way you're gonna hang yourself with your shoelaces before the record ends.

See, the problem with Yankees vs. Astros, at least for decent people, is it's either an impossible choice or an unthinkable one. The former involves not being able to choose who to root for. The latter is having to root for the Yankees, because, really, there's absolutely no way you'd want to see the Astros in the World Series again.

This is because, yes, they're a bunch of cheating nogoodniks who vandalized the game on their way to a couple of World Series titles, but also because they got away with it. Oh, sure, they got fined some couch-cushion change and stripped of their first-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021, but that's like telling a misbehaving child he's only getting dessert tonight.

No supper for you, young man! And we were having liver and onions!

That sort of thing.

This means an Astros-Yankees ALCS would put the Yankees on the side of the angels, and that simply cannot be. As a fan of a team owned by skinflints who sew their wallets shut with barbed wire, there is nothing I hate more than a team that struts around with large denominations falling out of their pockets. 

I can't even feel good about them money-whipping Gerrit Cole away from the Astros, because the Astros money-whipped him away from my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates.

There again the Yankees come away looking like the good guys.

Just typing that makes me want to amputate my fingers.

Please, Rays. Do the Lord's work here.