ARLINGTON, Texas — Why do we hate Cinderella so much in baseball?
Why is a run by a low seed so loved in, say, the NCAA Tournament or roundly ignored in the NBA, NFL or NHL, but greeted with calls for a Congressional subcommittee investigation into the root causes in MLB.
Miami goes from an eighth seed to the NBA Finals last year and that is a time to praise Heat Culture, not screams to overhaul the format.
Arizona goes from a sixth seed to the World Series and rather than embrace the long shot, there have been wide-ranging calls to tear down the current system to form something that benefits higher seeds more than the current first-round byes and home-field edges.
Which is odd because it is not as if the Diamondbacks are the first underwhelming regular-season club to reach the World Series.
The 1973 Mets were 13 games under .500 and last in the NL East on Aug. 17. They won the division, knocked off the mid-dynastic Big Red Machine in the NLCS and took the dynastic A’s to Game 7 before falling.
The 2006 Cardinals had two eight-game losing streaks plus then a seven-game losing streak within a September in which they had the NL’s second-worst record, within a final two months in which they played seven games under .500. They held on to win the NL Central, knocked off the Padres in the Division Series, ousted the NL-best Mets in the NLCS and upended Justin Verlander’s Tigers in the World Series.
Those playoff fields were smaller than today and you know what we will call the 1973 Mets? NL champions. You know what we call the 2006 Cardinals? Champions. No asterisks. We remember them for finding their way into the tournament and rising at the biggest moments.
The 1973 Mets won 82 games. The 2006 Cardinals won 83 games. The 2023 Diamondbacks have crashed the 119th World Series with 84 wins.
I get why there is such a desire to view Arizona as an interloper more than a worthy Fall Classic participant. The Diamondbacks played consecutive series in New York in mid-to-late September and lost three of four to the Mets and two of three to the Yankees. They looked so bad doing so at Citi Field that I lambasted the Mets for not figuring out how to be as good as this flawed Arizona team to have a shot for at least the third wild card.
But you can hold two thoughts at the same time — the Diamondbacks were lucky to get in because financial behemoths such as the Mets and Padres never got their acts together while the Cubs, Giants and Reds collapsed in the end. Yet, this is the system. And the system is not going to change in any sport. TV partners want playoff inventory. Fan bases generally want their teams to have a chance down the stretch. Every organization knows the rules of engagement going into the year — a third wild card in each league did not sneak up on folks.
And then once in, everyone knows tactics can change this time of year. The Diamondbacks do not have worthy Nos. 4-5 starters, but the way the schedule has fallen has enabled them to need a fourth starter just once to get through three playoff rounds. Their bullpen has gotten hot. Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte and Gabriel Moreno are stars. So the team that looked so terrible last month in New York has excelled in this format to eliminate clubs that won 92, 100 and 90 games, respectively. It is the crapshoot element of the playoffs — who’s healthy, hot and fits a style beholden to fewer players than the regular season?
Texas has enjoyed many of the same advantages; Nathan Eovaldi and Jordan Montgomery were 7-0 this postseason with a 2.29 ERA in 51 innings entering the World Series. The rest of the staff was 2-3 with a 4.89 ERA in 57 innings. The Rangers did not have the home field in any of the three rounds before having it in the World Series.
The Rangers were a fifth seed, but had the same record as the Astros; losing the AL West in a tiebreaker that allowed Houston to be the second seed. Thus, this is the third World Series between two wild cards and those first two were excellent seven-game confrontations — the Angels over the Giants in 2002 and the Giants over the Royals in 2014.
The participants this year provide the first World Series matchup ever between clubs who lost 100 games as recently as two years prior and the first between clubs that finished below .500 in the previous season since the last-to-first Twins-Braves 1991 matchup.
But surprise is part of the sport’s history from the Miracle Boston Braves of 1914 to the 1969 Miracle Mets to those 2006 Cardinals. Those clubs are not remembered as interlopers. They are remembered as champions.
The same will be true about the 2023 winner despite how they got here and regardless of the system.