World Series: Serious rooting interests

The World Series began last night, with the San Francisco Giants trying to lay claim as the latest “dynasty” in the baseball with their third World Series title in five years. Pretty impressive if they can pull it off, and they had a great start last night. In the Marist Running world, their most ardent supporter through the years has been our marathoning buddy Luke Shane. In discussing the Giants last night with Luke, his biggest concern was balancing his sleep needs (Luke is racing the NYC Marathon next week) with his loyalty to his team. The Giants did him a huge favor by running out to a quick early lead, which Madison Bumgarner easily managed to hold in a 7-1 victory. So hopefully Luke was able to get to bed early with the knowledge that there would be no magic comebacks this time.

Their opponent, the Kansas City Royals, appeals to anyone who loves an underdog story. They had not been to the postseason in 29 years, and for most of that time have been at best mediocre and at most irrelevant. And yet, through it all, our good friend, Marist Sports Information Director Mike Ferraro, has been loyal to the Royals. This is a man who plans his vacations and days off around Royals’ games. He has been justly rewarded as KC had the best second-half of the season and had been on an epic postseason run until last night. It’s a long series, Mikey.  

So, who am I rooting for? Luke and Mike are among my two favorite people, so this is difficult as I do not want to upset either of them. Ultimately, I’m an American League guy so I’ll probably be pulling for KC. But really, I’d just like to see a long series, if only to prolong the baseball season, which I will miss when it is done. One interesting caveat I learned of yesterday afternoon: Mikey has a friendly agreement with our new men’s basketball coach at Marist, Mike Maker, who apparently is a big Giants’ fan. If the Giants win, Mikey F will shave his face clean. He is currently sporting a hockey-esque “playoff beard” in support of the Royals. But! He has not been completely clean shaven (he usually sports a fashionably trimmed goatee) since the Clinton Administration. So this should be interesting.