MLB for the last month has delivered the “kind of 24-7, sensory-overload, tweet-this-sucker reintroduction of itself that’s required these days if you want to grab millions of people by the lapels and shake them out of their distracted disaffection,” according to Thomas Boswell of the WASHINGTON POST. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig during World Series Game Seven on Friday “was truly gratified” that the game “has come up gleaming and glowing again.” All seven postseason matchups “proved dramatic, with 13 games decided by one run (an MLB record) and six others by two.” The last month has “underlined almost everything in baseball that broadens a sport’s appeal” (WASHINGTON POST, 10/29). MLB.com’s Barry Bloom wrote Selig following Game Seven “couldn't have been more proud.” Selig: “This is terrific. It's been an incredible postseason, incredible in every way. This World Series has just been spellbinding. It was one great game after another." Selig said that “he worried how the postseason would top that incredible regular-season ending.” But “it did.” Selig: "Somebody said on television, baseball has had a coming-out party since Labor Day. I don't think so. I think it's always been there” (MLB.com, 10/29). SI’s Tom Verducci wrote, “Think about how baseball consumed our consciousness over these 32 days. The Night of 162, when four games, three of them down to the last at-bat, decided the last two playoff spots. A record-tying 38 postseason games, including four sudden death games. A record-breaking 13 postseason games decided by one run.” MLB “pulled us in with no gimmickry.” What “brought us to the television and to the edge of our seats was just baseball.” It is the “best kind of baseball: the baseball you don't see coming” (SI.com, 10/29).
WHAT A SEASON: In N.Y., Tyler Kepner wrote under the header, “Superb Season Restores Sport’s Glow.” From the “frantic scramble on the final night of the regular season to the heart-pounding playoffs, the result is heightened interest in a sport that for decades was its own worst enemy.” Selig “chafes at how the NFL is hailed for its parity, when his game has a lot of its own.” Selig: “There is parity like we’ve never had before” (N.Y. TIMES, 10/29). In Jacksonville, Kevin Upright wrote MLB fans “would have to agree and even non-baseball people have to admit that this was one of the best World Series they had seen” (JACKSONVILLE.com, 10/29). ESPN.com’s Jim Caple wrote under the header, “Postseasons Don’t Get Much Better.” This fall showed “why we love baseball.” If the Cardinals “can rally from 10 1/2 games back in late August to the postseason, from two runs down in the ninth and two more runs down in 10th, and come back to win when they twice were down to their final strike, there is hope for us all” (ESPN.com, 10/29). MLB.com’s Peter Gammon’s wrote MLB “once again proved that it is far more than the Red Sox and the Yankees” (MLB.com, 10/30).
