Niagara Falls, NY – Happy Monday.. My Jets are on the bye week, so I will take a break to talk about baseball and the World Series. Today’s topics will be the World Series, a Knicks update, and a Rangers update
World Series
I really struggle to pay attention to the whole series if my team isn’t in it. I can do a one-off game like the Super Bowl, but a whole best-of-seven series is hard for me. So I can’t say I really watched any of the recent World Series, but I did listen to a lot of people talking about it.
I mean, you had one game go 18 innings—only the second time that’s ever happened. Game 7 went into extra innings. Toronto won Game 1, then the Dodgers won two on the road, then Toronto won two in a row, then the Dodgers went on the road to win the series. It seemed to have a little bit of everything for every type of baseball fan: extra innings, blowouts, pitchers on very limited rest coming out of the bullpen in back-to-back games. Just an incredible series.
Plus, you had two big-market teams, which always drives more people. Of course, as a large market, people like to think of Toronto as small because it’s in Canada, but because it’s Canada, it’s the only representative from the entire country. Toronto is a massive city; it’s only behind New York, LA, and Mexico City when it comes to the largest cities in all of North America.
It had everything. It’s almost a shame it had to end. And when you win a series like that, it seems a couple of the games will go down as instant classics. The series as a whole has to go down as an instant classic and is arguably the greatest series ever.
NY Knicks
The Knicks had a rough week. They lost to Boston, lost to Milwaukee, and then got beaten badly by Chicago in the NBA Cup. They redeemed themselves last night by beating the Bulls (yes, they faced the Bulls twice in three nights).
It was a much more complete and dominant performance, and arguably their best of the season. The three losses were all on the road, while last night’s win was at home. So obviously, being at home, they were desperate and needed that win. They will be home for another six games, so hopefully, they can start getting into a groove as everybody gets healthy and they start playing with their full complement of players.
NY Rangers
What was supposed to be a road trip to break a losing streak seems to have brought them together. I think getting throttled by Calgary to start the trip was a wake-up call—which was scary because Calgary was the weakest team of the four on this trip. After that, the Rangers seemed to get it together.
They won in a shutout to Vancouver, but then they came back to beat Calgary, and then they took out Seattle in overtime. This might be a bit more of a serious for the Rangers than most, because on the road you really have to dig deep and support each other. To take three out of four, especially after starting 0-1, and get your first three game win streak of the season, is a big win for the coaching staff and a lot of the new guys. It’s still early, but these are the kind of moments that matter.
Thanks for reading and comment below. Come back tomorrow to hear from Ben Whitney about growing up with Kevin Arnold.
