Ink Tea Stone Leaf

October is here, which means that the Major League Baseball season has transitioned from a stately six-month marathon to a high pressure, high speed tournament, which will as always culminate in a World Series win for one team and broken dreams for everybody else.

I’m a little behind the ball this year, as my preferred team has already been eliminated from the tournament, far earlier than I had expected. Therefore, if I am to enjoy the rest of this year’s October baseball, I must swallow my pain and select a new team to root for. Fortunately, I have a system.

The following is the procedure I follow for selecting a team to pin my hopes and dreams on. This procedure, as will become apparent, is not optimized for avoiding a broken heart.

#1: The San Diego Padres

My hometown team, the first baseball team I ever rooted for and the one I will continue to root for as long as I live. San Diego’s success on the baseball field is an enduring preoccupation that overrides all other considerations.

The Padres, like four other MLB teams, have never won the World Series, although they have played in it twice. Of all those teams, they are the oldest, having joined the National League as an expansion in 1969. Consequently, they are the most due, as any fan with an interest in justice will surely agree. I still recall their loss in four games to the Yankees at the 1998 World Series with fury and sorrow.

Sadly, although the Padres made it to October this year, the latest in a welcome string of playoff appearances after a long drought, they have already been eliminated in the three game Wildcard Series by the Chicago Cubs. At the very least, they managed to win one game and avoid being shut out in the other two, yet a loss is a loss, and we will not see the Friars again until the spring, when we will once again commit ourselves to the hope that this will finally be the year. In the meantime, we must select a new team.

#2: The Seattle Mariners

San Diego’s friendly rivals in the Vedder Cup, the Mariners have also never won the World Series. In fact, as of 2025 they are the only team to have never played in the Series at all. However, I must point out that as the Mariners only joined the the American League in 1977, they have not been waiting as long as the Padres for the sweet taste of victory. Furthermore, as the Mariners are of the AL and the Padres are of the NL, neither team’s success precludes a World Series appearance by the other. A Mariners/Padres World Series is actually what I have been most hoping to see for many years now, but if such a match-up should ever take place, Mariners fans will have to accept that we Padres fans have been waiting longer and our team will show no mercy.

Furthermore, as I no longer live in San Diego but instead inhabit the great Pacific Northwest, the Mariners naturally exhibit a gravitational pull on me. One day we may be blessed with a team in Portland, but until that day the Mariners are geographically closest, and thus command some attention in our household.

The Mariners made the playoffs this year, and did so well in their league as to bypass the Wildcard Series. Consequently, they will make their first tournament appearance tomorrow at the start of the AL Division Series. I wish them the best, but as anybody will tell you, anything can happen in October. Should the Mariners falter, further contingencies will be required.

#3: The remaining National League team with the fewest World Series wins, excepting the Los Angeles Dodgers

Because the Padres are members of the National League, and because the Padres themselves almost never make it to the World Series, I usually find myself rooting for some other National League team. Which team I bestow my temporary allegiance to is determined simply by how due I deem them for a shot at the ultimate glory.

Of the four remaining NL teams, the Milwaukee Brewers are the only other member of the never-won-a-World-Series club. They also managed to score the best record in the regular season, at 97-65, which makes them a very exciting team to root for this year, and I like their chances. The fact that the Padres beat them in their final regular season series takes a little bit of the sting out of it, too.

Should the Brewers miss their chance, my allegiance will shift in turn to the Philadelphia Phillies (two World Series wins) and the Chicago Cubs (three World Series wins). Both are long-suffering teams with respectable legacies.

In this house, we do not root for the Dodgers, that team being the number one rivals of the Padres. Should the Dodgers claim the NL pennant once again, it will become necessary to shift my favor back to the other side of the baseball aisle.

#4: The remaining American League team with the fewest World Series wins

Of the remaining teams in the American League tournament, should the Mariners be eliminated, the Toronto Blue Jays have two World Series wins, and the Detroit Tigers have four. I like this year’s Blue Jays just fine, having put on a very fine season this year. If it comes down to it I could find myself cheering on the Tigers; they did defeat the Padres at that team’s first ever World Series appearance in 1984, but in that year I hadn’t even been born yet. Watching them rob the Dodgers too would be all the sweeter.

The New York Yankees have won the World Series twenty seven times, more than twice as many as any other team. One of those victories came at the expense of the Padres, in 1998. For these reasons, and the automatic disqualification of the Dodgers, the Yankees are literally the last team I would ever root for in the Fall Classic.

Last year, Yankees/Dodgers was precisely the match-up we were given, and the Yankees managed to embarrass themselves badly. My enthusiasm for watching them do this again is so low, it scarcely counts as rooting at all.

#5: A space rock crushes the field in the bottom of the ninth in Game Seven

Regardless of which two teams square off in the end, I usually tell people that I am rooting for a seven game series. The World Series is the culmination of a long season of passion and effort, and the dramatic potential of both teams confronting a must-win scenario cannot be exceeded. More baseball is better baseball, I say.

Last year, the Dodgers beat the Yankees in five games, having very nearly accomplished a four game sweep. Should I be forced to endure a rematch this year, I would like to see New York put up more of a fight, and take it all the way to a closely contested winners-take-all finale. Then, as close to the final out as possible, I would like to see both teams flattened by a meteorite large enough to turn whichever stadium they happen to be using into a smoldering pit, thereby tying a nice clean bow on MLB’s most historic rivalry and allowing some other teams a chance next year.

Disclaimer

At the risk of taking the bite out of the joke, I want to add that I do not wish harm or misfortune upon any member of the LA Dodgers (or any other team), many of whom I admire and respect as great players. My refusal to root for their team is grounded in two factors: the fact that they have already won enough, and the fact that some mysterious force has pulled them up like a magnet to the top of the NL West for nearly every year for over a decade, putting the Padres at a perpetual disadvantage even as they have recently enjoyed some of their best seasons in ages.

In that light, the space rock I wish to fall upon their heads should be understood as a metaphorical object, a harbinger of many long years in the wilderness while certain hungrier teams with stadiums just off the 5 (the Padres, the Mariners, hell even the Angels) feast on sweet, sweet opportunity.