A win for no masses

 The Texas Rangers won the World Series last night, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5 to end a remarkable run that included an astounding 11-0 road record in the playoffs. No one had ever gone 11-0 on the road in the playoffs, no matter how far you look back in those ancient game of ours.

The question remains, however: Did it make a sound?

Which is the shorthand version of "If you go 11-0 on the road and win the World Series and no one's around, does it make a sound?"

Well, yes, if you happened to the Rangers out in Arizona last night, or if you live in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, or if you're one of those folks who remember when the second incarnation of the Washington Senators moved to Texas in 1972. Remember Billy Martin managing them, and Mike Hargrove, Ferguson Jenkins and Jeff Burroughs playing for them in those early days? Well, some people still do.

Anyway, it's been 51 years since then, and the Rangers have finally won a World Series. And because it was two wild-card teams playing, and because the World Series is no longer the Fall Classic, hardly anyone was paying attention.

It was already going to be a Series that Fox knew was going to give it a bath, but it exceeded all expectations. Rangers-Diamondbacks, it turned out, drew the weakest TV numbers in history. It got buried by college football on Saturday, lost out to a thoroough Lions beating of the Raiders on Monday Night Football, and had to compete with the death of Bob Knight in last night's news cycle.

The last time the Series went head-to-head with Monday Night Football was 1996. And it was still THE SERIES then, so it beat out MNF in the ratings.

Twenty-seven years later, not so much.

This was too bad, because the Rangers run was little short of remarkable. They stumbled into the playoffs, blowing a 2 1/2-game lead in the AL West in the last weekend of the regular season, then took out the 99-win Rays and 102-win Orioles.

Then they won Games 6 and 7 in Houston against the nemesis Astros to advance to the World Series.

Three games into the Series, they lost Max Scherzer and Adolis Garcia, who'd been launching almost everything he saw into orbit. But Corey Seager, who became only the fourth player to win multiple Series MVPs in the 68-year history of the award, kept mashing the ball, and others joined in, and the Rangers scored 15 runs in last two games of the Series.

All of that was a big deal where it was a big deal. But everywhere else in an America given over wholly to football now?

Crickets, sadly. Crickets.