Most years – like most Royals fans, I expect – I haven’t paid a ton of attention to the MLB playoffs. Even when I have, it’s been only to follow the Royals when they’re participating. This year, however,
I decided I wasn’t ready to be done watching baseball. So I picked an AL team (the Mariners) and an NL team (the Phillies). And I’ve watched them when I could. I even picked a tier list of teams for each league* so I’d always have someone to root for until the very end.
*Mariners, Blue Jays, Tigers, Red Sox, Yankees, Guardians in the AL, and Phillies, Padres, Brewers, Reds, Dodgers, Cubs in the NL if you’re curious.
What I’ve discovered is just how absolutely delightful it can be to watch playoff baseball when you have a rooting interest, but they aren’t your team.
It has been fantastic to watch the Mariners play baseball this postseason. They had a heck of a series against the Tigers, culminating in one of the most exciting winner-take-all playoff games I’ve had the pleasure to watch in that 15-inning finale. The ALCS is likewise heading to a winner-take-all contest tonight, and I couldn’t be more excited for the absolute bonkers-bananas, no-holds-barred matchup we should get as George Kirby and Shane Bieber take the mound for their teams. Not every game in the series has been competitive, but the series as a whole has been, and having a rooting interest has made it all the more fun.
On the other side, I’m clearly down to my second-to-last choice in the NL. Still, when the Padres got unceremoniously knocked out in the Wild Card series, it was a bummer for a few minutes, but not a week or more, like when the Royals got knocked out last year. Even when the Phillies and Brewers were knocked out by the Dodgers, I was annoyed at how they got there – the Phillies with an awful error and the Brewers without putting up any kind of fight – but I experienced no lasting negative emotions.
And so it is that I am finally able to enjoy baseball in a way that many others have enjoyed it throughout history, without any anxiety or distress. I find it impossible to watch sports without rooting for someone, so having my tier list has helped me with that issue, but since none of them are my team, I don’t have to be upset if/when they’re knocked out. Even if we’d had another Cubs/Guardians World Series, I could have rooted for Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kyle Tucker, and former Royal Brad Keller to get the job done. And only if the Guardians or Yankees had won it all would I have been more than passingly disappointed.
So, yeah, if you regularly skip the playoffs because your team isn’t in it, I really recommend watching. Obviously, this year’s playoffs are almost over, but there are lots of years of baseball left. I figure we’ve got at least until Shohei retires. This might honestly even be more fun than watching the Royals simply from a lack of stress standpoint. Heaven knows we could all use more simple pleasures and less stress in our lives.
And hey, while we’re here, who do you want to win tonight? The team that hasn’t been to the World Series in more than 30 years, or the team that has never been? There are no wrong answers, just some very exciting baseball to watch!
