American Sport is Pink Cocaine.

The World Series starts today - it's potent stuff - be careful.

My buddy Spooge and I wasted on baseball at Dodger Stadium.

For the first time in 43 years, we have a Dodgers-Yankees World Series, and it starts today. So much to be excited about. It’s LA v NYC. West v East Coast. Two iconic teams. Two massive population bases. It’s Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Robert D. Manfred, Jr‘s wet dream. The teams are evenly matched, so it will likely go to game 7. Then there’s the history. It’s a rivalry that goes all the way back to when both teams were from NYC. Arguably, the Yankees are the fly-by-night New York team in this competition. They’ve only been in town for 121 years.

Dodger Stadium

The Dodgers, on the other hand, formed in Brooklyn in 1884 as the Grays. The Grays became the Bridegrooms and, eventually, the Trolley Dodgers. A name that acknowledged the skill their fans needed to avoid heavy traffic to get into their stadium. The New York Yankees called the Orioles back then, didn’t move to New York from Baltimore until 1903. There, they changed their name to The Highlanders (just like Otago) and being in different leagues in the city, they didn’t play the Dodgers for the first time until 1913. The following year, the Highlanders became the Yankees, and 17 years after that, they played the Dodgers in a World Series for the first time. The 1941 WS was colloquially dubbed the Bronx Bombers v Dem Bums. As much as the Dodgers loved being called bums, it didn’t stop the Yankees from winning the series 4 games to 1. The two teams have met in the WS 10 further times - more than any other rivalry. The Yankees have won 8 of those.

This brings us to the 2024 World Series, the first pitch of which is today at 1:06 pm NZT. As a huge LA Dodgers fan, can I just say ahead of this historic, exciting, dream series - that I am not looking forward to it at all. I feel sick thinking about the thing. When you really care about a team, playoffs hurt. The games are not fun—well, not until you win. You enjoy the chat around the games. You love the players. You enjoy drinking and eating while you watch. But there is too much at stake to experience any comfort during a fixture. Once the series starts, fans will be stressed out for all 9 innings of every game.

We Kiwis need to be very careful around American sports. They are extremely addictive and pushy. In recent years, they have been knocking louder and louder at our door to get in. I love my Rugby, League, and Cricket, but as great as these sports are, they should fear the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB. American leagues and franchises are peddling their shit on every global corner.

If New Zealand sport is equivalent to weed and booze, American sport is crack, heroin, and a Dodger Dog all in one. It might even be meth, MDMA, bath salts, caffeine and opioids. The pink cocaine stuff that caused problems in Argentina last week. Maybe it's too soon to bring that up, but either way, American sport is cashed up, glamourous, brilliantly hyped, potent, and, in the case of baseball, a nearly everyday habit. You think SuperRugby and NRL have long seasons? The MLB teams play a minimum of 162 games a year. Watching that much baseball takes a toll on your life. It becomes your life. But that’s the easy part. Add a nerve-racking post-season with a Wild Card Series, Division Series, Championship Series, and World Series, and a team may lose on the 184th match of the year.

With so much life invested into the regular season games, an early playoff knockout is like losing a limb. The 2022 season was particularly rough for LA fans. I was at Dodger Stadium for two of those National League Division Series games. While I was stoked to be sitting three rows behind Jason Bateman, I felt personally embarrassed when we lost the series 3-1 to the dirty Padres. To my shame, I was there when that California Goose crash-landed in shallow right field. I was part of the hated section of the crowd who chanted ‘Luck Duck, Luck Duck, Luck Duck’ to try and rally the Dodgers to come back from 5-3 down. They didn’t. Some believe this mislabeling of this California Goose as a duck cursed the team. It certainly felt like that the following year when the lowly Diamondbacks knocked us out in the same series.

As I said, American Sport is addictive. It can get you hooked with just one live dose. I got sucked in while in Colorado twelve years ago. On a whim, a few friends and I went to watch the Rockies at Coors Field in Denver. I was bored at first, then interested, then enthralled, and then when the Dodgers big bats started hitting, I was in for life. Well, more accurately, I was bored, then started drinking watery beer, then became interested, then full from eating an upside-down baseball hat full of nachos and two hotdogs, then drunk, then enthralled.

Moments before becoming addicted to baseball at Coors Field in Denver.

The next day, I woke up with an itch I had to scratch. I began reading furiously about this team in blue. I watched the Ken Burns Baseball doco.

Waking up in Colorado addicted to Baseball.

My Dodgers addiction was accelerated further by LA commentator Vin Skully. Vin came over with the Dodgers from Brooklyn in 1957 and didn’t hang up his mic until 2016 at 88. He passed away in 2022. That was a sad day. No one told a story like Vin.

Since then, I have been to see a bunch of baseball games at different parks, but it’s always been LA for me. A team like the Dodgers will get into your veins in many ways. The kit is beautiful. How many Dodgers hats do you see walking around in New Zealand? 1 in 1000 of those people follow the team. The quality of the coverage, the huge crowds, the analysis. It all draws you in. Then, you learn the types of pitches, the strategy, the stats, and the history. Each At Bat is a battle within a battle within a battle. But really, it’s the players you learn to love, worship and care about. In the case of the 2024 Dodgers, you have some of the most likeable superstars ever to play the game. The Dodgers shocked the world when they paid 700 million dollars for Shohei Ohtani in late 2023, but that is starting to look like a bargain. He has brought the entire nation of Japan to the Dodgers, and he’s only batting this year. The man is a baseball unicorn, and next year will once again be a starting pitcher. The scary thing about Shohei is that he is probably a better pitcher than a batter and will likely win MVP this year. Freddie Freeman spent 12 years at the Atlanta Braves but now feels like the heart of LA. Then there’s Freddie's best mate, one-time Redsox legend Mookie Betts, who is now at shortstop and has the most incredible set of skills. But my favourite player is Kiké Hernandez. He left LA for Boston and then came back to the ecstasy of Dodgers fans. Hernandez is the definition of post-season clutch. Most players freak out when the games become important but Kiké goes better in October than the rest o the year. But why? When LA won the NLDS against the dirty Padres, he was asked by the bowtie-wearing baseball brain Ken Rosenthal why the Dodgers are different this season than the last few. Kiké checked to make sure the broadcast was going out live and answered, “Because of the fact we don’t give a fuck”. Very Dodgers!

Kiké’s profanity was the best in Baseball since Chas Utley (who finished his career at the Dodgers and is still part of the organisation) yelled “World Champions - World Fucking Champions” live on tv and in front of one hundred thousand Philadelphia fans in 2008.

On the Yankees side, you have the superstar Aaron Judge, who hit 58 home runs this season to Ohtani’s 54. This is the first World Series ever where two players have hit over 50 home runs in the regular season. Like Shohei, he will likely win MVP for for his league this year. That will be the first time two MVPs have played in the World Series, ever. The Yankees also have Juan Soto, the superstar who hit the go-a-head homer to get the Yankees into the World Series and a bunch of other kick-arse dudes like Giancarlo Stanton (DH), Anthony Volpe (SS), RHP Luis Gil. This is a WS packed with superstars.

So, here we go. The first two games will be played at Dodger Stadium. Then, everyone will fly in their teams’ private jets for five and a half hours to New York to play the next three at Yankee Stadium. Then, if needed, they will fly back to LA for games 6 and 7.

The Dodgers have won the World Series in 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988 and 2020. The Yankees have 27 World Series Titles, most recently in 2009. The Dodgers are slightly favoured at this stage. Los Angeles Dodgers: -125 (bet $10 to win $18 total). New York Yankees: +105 (bet $10 to win $20.50 total).

This makes me very nervous as we don’t have much pitching. They have 4 starters we only 3.

Here’s a confusing run down on the odds.

Maybe the passing of Fernando Valenzuela this week will be the difference for LA. The focus of "Fernandomania" in 1981 when he won the CY Young and the Rookie of the Year award on the way to the Dodgers winning the World Series. He had arguably the most incredible start to a professional career of any athlete in any sport. The team are wearing a little 34 on their uniforms. In a game where teams play each year for real at the actual field from the movie Field Of Dreams, ghosts can’t be completely ruled out as a factor in this series.

IN CONCLUSION

I wish I never tried baseball all those years ago in Colorado. I wish I had said no. Imagine all the time I could have spent with my family instead of with a foreign sports team. All the productive things I could have achieved in my life. Imagine if I had put that energy into my friends, work, or sports teams who actually play in my city. The knowledge I could hold on the comings and goings of good, honest Kiwi teams. Knowledge I could actually use on air without boring everyone senseless with baseball chat. Imagine supporting a team I could go and watch live without travelling 10500km.

Don’t be like me. Follow Rugby, League, Cricket, Football or Netty. Don’t go anywhere near American sports.

Having said that - who cares - LET’S FUCKING GO DODGERS!!!!!!!!

If you are interested, here’s my LA starters prediction—a lot of work for the Bullpen.

G1: Jack Flaherty G2: Yoshinobu Yamamoto G3: Walker Buehler/Bullpen G4: Walker Buehler/Bullpen Game G5: Jack Flaherty G6: Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Anyway you seem busy, I will let you go. Consider a paid subscription if you haven’t already and want to support my stuff and enjoy bonus stuff.

Bless, Bless, Bless.
Give Em A Taste of Kiwi

Love MH

This story also appears in The Bounce, a Fantastic Substack newsletter by Dylan Cleaver.

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