After the Kansas City Royals were eliminated from playoff contention in late September, it was guaranteed that the sport would have it's fifteen different champion in as many years. To me, that is a great thing. Whether or not the team you routinely cheer for has made it into the post season, if you're a fan of the sport, you should enjoy this fact. It's good for the sport because it brings in fans from cities and states that might not always be watching baseball in October. Or watching it at all.
With all that said, that does not mean that all the teams that are in the post season this year aren't there all the time, or on a consistent basis. What it means is that you don't see repeat winners. The closest the sport has had to back to back champions are the Royals who won it all last year and lost to San Fransisco the year before. It's great to see teams like the Cubs and Indians make it to the playoffs because for some of the players, it's their first trip. They get really excited about it. Even if it is just for one series, even if they don't get to the World Series. It gives them that experience they dreamt about as kids. Anyone that played baseball as a kid had that dream about hitting a game winning home run in the playoffs or World Series. This diversity that we see with all kinds of different teams making it to the playoffs let them relive that dream. Kind of.
Watching a team repeat as champions is the worst for fans of the game that are fans of the team. Whenever the team that I root for, regardless of the sport, doesn't make it to the playoffs, I like to find the team that shouldn't be there. The team that has had a surprising season or a team that has struggled for so long that you feel great for them just for making it to the playoffs. It's like when a low seeded basketball team makes a deep run in the college basketball tournament. You find yourself wanting them to knock off the big time teams. It's the same with baseball. You don't like seeing teams year after year winning the World Series (unless you root for them). I like to see diversified post seasons. Granted, it would be nice to see the Tigers in it every year, but with them out it does make it less stressful to watch.
If a team makes it to the post season year after year, that does not always guarantee that they'll have a successful run. One year they could be eliminated in the wild card game only to come back the following year and win it all. And yes, it's nice to see that. But I like seeing different teams win it every year. It makes it that much more exciting. If you think back to the late 90s and early 2000s, the Yankees were winning seemingly every year. And weren't we all rooting for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001? Let's all be honest. And it wasn't all because it was the Yankees (okay, maybe it was), but wasn't it because we all wanted to see a different team win? If it had been the Pittsburgh Pirates that were winning year after year, wouldn't you want to see someone else win?
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