Anything is better than listening to John Smoltz for 7 hours.
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Each sport has their awful play by play analyst and somehow they always get picked for the best games. Reggie Miller, Gary Danielson, John Smoltz, Tony Romo etc etc
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This is very interesting insight from Joe Posananski about momentum in sports.
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You’ve probably heard the very famous (and utterly wonderful) Earl Weaver quote about momentum — “Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher.”
That’s not exactly how it goes, though. I’ve been chasing after that quote for years, and I’m now convinced it comes from a glorious 1979 interview Weaver had with my old Cleveland pal, the legendary sportswriter Terry Pluto. He was a rookie reporter with the Baltimore Evening Sun, and he nervously spoke with the Earl as the Orioles prepared for their ALCS matchup with the California Angels.
I’m actually going to stay on that interview for a few moments, if that’s OK, because it’s so filled with baseball goodies. If I do this right, it will take us right up to the Blue Jays’ dominant 6-2 pasting of the Dodgers Tuesday night that evened up this World Series. If I don’t do this right, well, at least you’ll get some fun Earl Weaver stuff.
The O’s won 102 games that year after eating Yankee dust for a few years — and Pluto apprehensively asked Weaver about his team’s momentum going into October.
“Young man,” Weaver said, “I’m gonna let you in on a secret. There ain’t no such thing as momentum. All that psychology stuff they talk about is baloney. It comes down to one thing: whoever plays better wins. Remember, the better team always wins in the end.
“Let me give you an example of #%#&^ momentum [Editor’s note: I don’t actually know that Weaver used an expletive here, but I’ve got to believe he did, and I couldn’t help but add it — you can add expletives throughout these quotes. It’s fun!] Your team has won six in a row. They’re playing great ball. And then Tommy John comes along and throws a great game and wins a 1-0 shutout. So what happened to momentum? Tommy John took care of that. And no amount of psychology is gonna beat him when he’s got everything working.”
I believe that’s your renowned “Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher” quote.
But it’s more than that. Weaver was so far ahead of his time on so many baseball things. Just from this one article:
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Earl on radar guns: He used them at every home game when few around baseball did. “With the radar gun, there’s no such thing as a pitcher who’s ‘sneaky fast,’” he said. “We tell our hitters that this guy is throwing 90 mph, and they know exactly how fast that is.”
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Earl on pitcher-hitter matchups: “I have a record of how all my hitters fared against all the pitchers in the league. When I make out my lineup, I put the guys who have hit the starting pitcher in the past. It’s not foolproof, and you need to get a guy 15 at-bats to get a good reading against a pitcher. But it’s the best system I know.”
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Earl on what a manager relies on: Baseball judgment, statistics, research, and a little superstition.
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Earl on how you build a team: “You don’t always take the 25 best athletes. You pick the 25 guys best suited for what you want them to do. … I want guys on my bench like Pat Kelly and John Lowenstein who can go in there and pick the team up. They do things to win games. Ideally, everybody on the club is able to do something to help win a game.”
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Earl on in-game strategies: “That’s the easiest part. Anybody knows when to bunt and things like that.”
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Earl on how many games per season a manager wins or loses: “Every single one.”
Nobody has ever understood baseball quite like The Earl. But perhaps his greatest insight was on momentum — not just that it’s tomorrow’s starting pitching, but that it’s baloney. He was poo-pooing the hot-hand fallacy years before psychologists even invented the term. And finally, we arrive in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.
If EVER there was going to be a game shaped by momentum, this was it. The Dodgers beat the Blue Jays in a soul-crushing 18-inning opera (or soul-lifting symphony, depending on your perspective), and just 17 hours later, the two teams were playing again. The Dodgers had the best player on the planet on the mound. The Blue Jays had a former Cy Young winner still trying to find his way back after a devastating injury. The game was in Los Angeles, where the fans smelled blood. This was the momentum game of all time.
And what happened?
Vladimir Guerrero Jr didn’t give a damn about momentum and hit a two-run homer off Shohei because Vladdy is a bang-bating, bell-ringing, big-haul, great-go, neck-or-nothing, rip-roaring, every-time-a-bullseye hitting savant.
Shane Bieber didn’t give a damn about momentum and used all of his experience and moxie to work his way through the Dodger land mines without, as [John Candy used to say on SCTV]**, getting himself blowed up.
**Colin Hanks directed a heartwarming new documentary called “John Candy: I Like Me,” that is streaming now on Prime Video. Watch it! There’s an old line that nice people don’t make for great literature or movie-making. Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s something so sweet about connecting with a guy who went through life just treating people well and making people laugh. I don’t know — that seems like something to strive for.
Dave Roberts didn’t give a damn about momentum, and he put Blake Treinen in the game long after that guy should have been put up on the shelf BEHIND the elf. You would think that at some point, pharmaceutical companies would develop a Treinen patch — call the drug Treinominym — that Roberts could wear on his arm to help him quit Blake Treinen.
Here’s the commercial song:
I grew tired of the whinin’
And my reliever redlinin’
And my ballclub declinin’
I finally … understood
That I could do some redesignin’
My strategy needed refinin’
And now I’m done with Blake Treinen
And I’m done with him for good!
The Blue Jays didn’t just win this anti-momentum game; they made the Dodgers look pretty helpless. Los Angeles managed just six hits, none of them with runners in scoring position. Shohei Ohtani — who had been so good that everybody wondered if he would ever see another pitch — went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts. Mookie Betts, the Greatest Living American, continued to look out of sorts.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays did what they’ve been doing for a while now — they kept poking out hits and annoying pitchers until they could string together one rally. And one rally was all they needed.
So now what? The series is 2-2; this thing is definitely going back to Toronto for at least a Game 6, and it sure feels like the same strategy holds: The Blue Jays will try to irritate and exasperate tonight’s Dodgers starter, Blake Snell, enough to get him out of the game so they can face Treinen and the Argonauts. The Dodgers will try to regain their power stroke off 22-year-old Trey Yesavage and ride Snell as long as they can.
Unless a completely different storyline develops.
And a completely different storyline absolutely could develop. This is baseball. Momentum is baloney, as the Earl said. So are predictions. The team that plays best will win.
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Slumps and slump busting is real. So is bad things happening when you drink Jobu’s rum. 
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One thing I forgot about, as the lone MLB team in Canada the Blue Jays represent the entire country, thus they definitely have more fans pulling for them than the Dodgers. It’s hard to imagine the St. Louis Blues interrupting an NHL game to recognize Los Angeles making it to the World Series, as was done in Calgary for the Blue Jays, a similar distance from Toronto as L.A. is to St. Louis.
I also did not know the Blue Jays have a song until watching this video:
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A lot of us in the U.S. are pulling for Team Canada as well. Some refer to us as “un-American”, but I would like to remind them that Canada is in the Americas, too. 
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OK (OK) Blue Jays (Blue Jays) Let’s.. Play.. Ball!
I remember singing that song when I was a kid.
That said I was more of an Expos fan which was my grandma’s favorite team. Thankfully they moved after she passed. She would have been devastated.
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The little league team I played on was the Bluejays. Oh, and I had one flying around in my backyard this morning.
Maybe it’s voodoo.
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If Toronto wins, I’m ok with that, for the reasons cited.
Baseball is like a slot machine where you can bend the odds a little one way or another…but it’s still a slot machine.
Nobody is surprised when the worst team beats the best team. No team got to .600 this year, nobody got to 100 wins. Pete Rose was right…even if he was an idiot and bet on baseball, anyway.
Will momentum carry the Bluejays tonight? Will Yamamoto pull out another gem?
Go Dodgers! Go Bluejays! It’s been a great series.
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WOW! That is a game ending play!
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All I know is “It’s the hope that will kill you” and the Dodgers apparently want to murder me.
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As a, mostly non-fan of either team, I have enjoyed the series. The Jays just have a knack of getting hits when they need them. The Dodger have the superstars to keep you watching for their next monumental play. I don’t know who I prefer to win. I enjoy the story lines from both. I hope that game 7 is a game that we’ll all talk about for a long time.
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The game ending play was kind of an aberration. Normally an outfielder would play that hit conservatively, trying to limit the damage if you miss it, maybe play for extended innings. Instead, Kike charged it.
For Game 7, LA will probably start Ohtani, then bring Glasnow off the bench to preserve Ohtani’s ability to hit. Only pitcher who can’t throw is Yamamoto.
Hopefully it’s a great game, to match a great series, no matter who wins.
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While I’ve seen my share of plays where a ball bounces out of play for a ground-rule double, after over half a century watching baseball, I can’t remember ever seeing a ball get wedged under the outfield wall like that to stop play. (Outfielders had the awareness not to grab it)
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Yeah what are the odds? Landed perfectly.
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CHAMPS! Los Doyers are Back 2 Back in maybe the greatest WS I have witnessed.
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Happy for you
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Why doesn’t this site have a downvote function??
Ok fine. Congrats
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That was a helluva game 7. Seems appropriate that it went into extra innings.
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