The regular Major League Baseball season has concluded, and by the time you read this, either your team is or has been in the playoffs.
Or perhaps because of a losing or break-even record your boys did not qualify and were relegated to an autumn and winter of golf, offseason workouts and Simonizing the Porsche.
But since 12 of the 30 Major League Baseball ballclubs made it to the increasingly diluted alphabetic postseason, there’s a good chance you’ve been watching fall baseball. Playoff games are big money, and the more teams that play in the post season, the more lucre for Major League Baseball.
The playoffs are a win-win moneymaker for owners and players, not to mention the TV networks. But they’re a losing proposition for the loyal rooters who’ve spent the summer following their favorite teams but must pay hyperinflated prices on tickets for bonus baseball. It’s the price you pay for supporting a winner.
They don’t talk about winning the “pennant” anymore. Rather, we’ve got the NLDS, the NLCS, the ALDS, the NLCS and, of course, the contrivance known as the “wild card” round which prevents six also-ran teams from taking home nothing more than participation ribbons as reward for the 162-game regular season.
Thankfully, they haven’t started calling the World Series by the acronym WS. But this year’s championship, sometimes called the Fall Classic, is formally called the 2026 World Series Sponsored by (insert name of giant corporation who neither needs to be nor will be mentioned here.) You’ll hear the ceremonial title every time national telecasts inform you of each game’s score and at each commercial break.
If your guys made it to the after party, congratulations. Enjoy the thrills. Rejoice with joy in your heart every time the angels gloriously reach down and lead your guys to victory over some hated rival. (We’re looking at you, Red Sox and Yankees.)
Weep bitter tears if your fellas lose and don’t advance to become the world’s greatest baseball team. But win or lose revel in the delicious schadenfreude that your team got to the playoffs and someone else’s team didn’t. Haha.
If your squad pulled up short this year and didn’t make the post season (sorry, Blue Jays), there’s always the old rallying cry, “wait till next year!”
Except, of course, that owners and players are at each other’s throats over a new collective bargaining agreement, and there may be no Major League Baseball in 2027. If politics has taught us anything, it’s that nothing happens until there’s a crisis. Here’s hoping that’s true in MLB and we’re celebrating Spring Training in Clearwater and Dunedin followed by an action-packed summer of the erstwhile National Pastime next year.
If your team is still playing, though, you’ve already lost them to the national spotlight. Network broadcasters who know little more about your team than what’s on the stat sheets and talking points they’ve been handed by network researchers will be calling the games.
Something is lost when the team’s regular broadcasters aren’t in the broadcast booth. Baseball announcers are like friends who are with you throughout the highs and lows of summer. They are regular guests in your house. You invite them in because you rely on them for team insights, maybe even some in-jokes with local fans. They’re family.
The national guys are fine. They’re professionals. They may even know a little about baseball even though they normally call the NFL, NHL, college basketball or any other games that serve as time killers until baseball season begins anew.
But it’s not the same.
Some familiar presences will be missing from the table.
Nonetheless, soak it up while you can. If you’re relying on common sense to win out in MLB’s baseball’s labor negotiations, you’re on a fool’s errand.
But whatever your team does in the playoffs this year, no matter if players and owners agree on the time of day, take heart in the notion that they’ll be playing baseball in Clearwater and Dunedin next year. Minor league players are covered by a different collective bargaining agreement, and unless players are on a Major League team’s 40-man roster, the Blue Jays and Threshers will return to Dunedin’s TD Ballpark and Clearwater’s BayCare Ballpark in 2027.
In the meantime, as long as there’s a chance for a Milwaukee Brewers-Tampa Bay Rays World Series, enjoy the playoff run of both teams. And take the Brewers in seven games.