Trump at Game 5: Live by the theatrical gesture, die by the theatrical gesture.

Reminiscent of John 3:16?

I'll remember the World Series as the first time in a long while that I rooted for a National League team. New York Yankees appearances are an exception, and in cases of a Dodgers-Yankees series, I wouldn't watch at all.

I've nothing whatever against the players, but I couldn't abide the Houston front office's tone-deaf response to assistant general manager Brandon Taubman's outbursts aimed at female reporters, which took place following the league championship series.

Seems Taubman outed himself as a douche bag -- albeit it explainable behavior for him given a former career on Wall Street -- and his superiors arrogantly flailed for days before belatedly mouthing platitudes absent sincerity about their comprehension of a changing world.

Around the game, shots of schadenfreude have been chased by I-told-you-so's. Contempt for the Astros runs deep -- and has well before this incident. Jealousy breeds some of it. The organization's arrogance accounts for the rest. The Astros painted themselves as a disrupter and reveled in the commotion. They lived with the perception that they didn't understand people. They fed their process, followed it with fealty, doubled down. They believed in it, and they never had much of a reason not to, not until a week ago, when the assistant GM high on the feeling of winning the pennant opened his mouth, and two days later, when Luhnow and the Astros forgot to abide by that essential principle that has guided them for so long: Bad information leads to bad decisions.

Spare the tears for Taubman. Before we know it he'll be back at an investment firm, screwing taxpayers.

 And the Trump scene at Game 5? Spew feces for a living, and you'd best expect to get feces spewed back at you.

I'm happy the Washington Nationals won; again, nothing against the Astros as players. Even apart from the Houston front office fiasco, witnessing a seven-game pro sports series in which the visiting team won all the games is something we're not likely to see repeated.

Take me out of this ball game at The Economist

Donald Trump’s embarrassing reception at the World Series was a defining moment of his presidency

As a rule of thumb, the more an American president is loved, the more baseball stories there are about him.

Although not Donald Trump.

He had not been to watch the Washington Nationals (the Senators’ successors) before this week. And though he was persuaded to go because the “Nats” were appearing in their first World Series, he was not invited to throw the first pitch. On what he might have expected to be his best day as commander-in-chief (he revealed the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hours earlier), he was hidden away in an executive suite. The Lerner family that owns the Nats did not want him sitting with them. And the one time he flashed up on the big screen the jeering of the crowd was thunderous. A chant of “Lock him up!” rippled round the stadium long after Mr Trump’s image was replaced by footage of smiling servicemen. “Veterans for impeachment” read a banner behind home plate.

The usual battle lines were drawn.

Mr Trump’s Republican defenders dismissed this indignity as mere swamp gurgling. “You can either be loved in dc and hated in America. Or you can be loved in America and hated in dc,” tweeted Congressman Jody Hice. But it signified much worse for the president and his party than a few thousand hostile bureaucrats.

The newspaper concludes ...

He is not the first president to be booed at a sporting event. Bill Clinton was jeered by a nascar crowd, George W. Bush and Barack Obama at baseball games. But veterans of those occasions (and there were several watching the Nats that night) considered the hatefulness of the response to Mr Trump qualitatively different. This should make conservatives even more worried. For years they have exaggerated the vindictiveness and radicalism of the left to mask the contradictions in their own camp. Yet Mr Trump’s divisiveness has turned this into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Charged with partisan grievance, many on the left want to scrap the electoral college, pack the courts—do whatever it takes to never again be tyrannised by an antediluvian minority. Conservatives may soon have more than the odd gay wedding cake to contend with.

And it already seems certain that the one baseball event Mr Trump will be associated with occurred at Nationals Park this week. Sport lifts people with a feeling of vicarious striving for perfection even when their team loses. And when it wins, as the Nationals ultimately did, bringing Washington its first World Series in almost a century, the memory never fades. This is why sport is so much more loved than politics. Immortalised in baseball history, Mr Trump’s humiliation this week will be remembered long after most of his administration’s scandals have faded into oblivion.

Happy Yankees Elimination Day! Now let's remember the flair and hotness of the Montreal Expos, forerunners of the Washington Nationals.

"Now there were no more doubts. Everybody knew that big league baseball was in Montreal to stay."

Well, not exactly. The Expos of Canada were acquired by the nation's capital in the USA (itself an ignominious two-time loser when it came to keeping its major league baseball team), and the team's final game as the Expos was played in Montreal in 2004.

Now the newly minted Washington Nationals are in the World Series against Houston; it is the first championship match-up for the franchise in either Montreal or Washington, leaving the Seattle Pilots as the only team that has not been to the Series.

Baseball fans are looking back at the history of the Montreal Expos, and I must say that my nine-year-old self was enamored of the uniforms 50 years ago when the Expos debuted. I still love the logo. There is an effort underway to place another expansion team in Montreal or move an existing one, as both Tampa Bay and Oakland are vulnerable for so long as new stadiums don't come to their respective cities.

Montreal is back in the running. The first time around, ballpark poutine wasn't even a thing.

The Luckless Expos Gave Birth to the Nationals, and a Lot More, by Tyler Kepner (New York Times)

The heritage of the Expos includes a devastating end to their brilliant 1994 season, but also spectacular players who made good elsewhere while never forgetting Montreal.

 ... (Pedro) Martinez is one of eight Hall of Famers who played for the Expos, along with Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, Randy Johnson, Tony Perez, Tim Raines and Lee Smith. It is an impressive legacy for a team that reached the playoffs just once and that began with 10 losing seasons, starting at 52-110 in 1969.

And just what caused those inaugural Expos to struggle? “Any team that had a different uniform on,” Ron Fairly said with a laugh over the phone from his home in Indian Wells, Calif. Fairly, an outfielder, won three World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but was traded to Montreal for Manny Mota and Maury Wills in June 1969. It was a culture shock.

“I remember thinking, ‘I’m coming from the beaches and warm weather and a team expected to win 100 games, and I’m going to cold weather and a team expected to lose 100 games,’” Fairly said. “They got rid of me, so they might as well send me to Siberia.”

The Expos played their first eight seasons at Parc Jarry, with a capacity below 30,000, a swimming pool beyond the right field fence (Willie Stargell and Willie McCovey dunked homers into it) and, for outfielders, a piercing glare off metal benches in the seating bowl.

After the city hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics, the Expos moved to Olympic Stadium, with a Metro station below, a malfunctioning retractable roof above, a running track as the warning track behind the plate and a peculiar vibe all over.

(snip)

 ... (Warren) Cromartie is now the hitting coach for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan, but he has maintained close ties to Montreal, gathering an investment group to bring a team back to the city, which has staged popular spring training exhibitions and is targeting the Yankees for a visit next spring.

“We’d rather not split games, but we have to be realistic with what’s going on in M.L.B. right now,” Cromartie said on the phone from Tokyo, where he was preparing for the Japan Series. “The commissioner’s made it very clear that until the Tampa and Oakland situations are rectified, they’re trying to come up with other solutions. But M.L.B. has played in London and Mexico, and internationally is where the game is going. We are already an established franchise, and we’re ready for a team now.”

Montreal would have to show solid funding for a new ballpark, of course, but with more than 4 million people in the metropolitan area, it has obvious appeal to M.L.B. And while there are no former Expos left in the majors — Bartolo Colon was the last — some vestiges remain.

The Nationals recognize Carter, Dawson and Raines in the ring of honor at Nationals Park — with the Expos logo beside their names — and the team wore Montreal uniforms in a victory on July 6.

It was a stylish gesture, but the Nationals were just renting the look. Ancestry is one thing, but the pennant flies in Washington — and the throwback uniforms belong to Montreal.

“It was good to see them again,” Cromartie said. “I tried to compare them to all the uniforms now, and those uniforms were hot — and they’re still hot. When we eventually come back, we’re going to have some of the hottest uniforms in the game.”

"Go Cubs Go: How Chicago's victory anthem keeps a father alive for his daughters."

I am not now nor have I ever been a fan of the Chicago Cubs.

However, as a history buff, it isn't possible to let this moment pass without a tip of the chapeau to the World Series champs.

Thanks to Kent Sterling for the Fb prompt.

Go Cubs Go: How Chicago's victory anthem keeps a father alive for his daughters, by Michael Rosenberg (Sports Illustrated)

Steve Goodman died in 1984 but his Cubs theme song has become an essential part of the Wrigley Field experience and provides a powerful memory for the family he left behind.

Bernie Carbo's brightest baseball moment, 40 years ago tonight.

40 years ago tonight, Bernie Carbo made possible Carlton Fisk's legendary World Series home run.

But what wasn't known at the time was Carbo's condition -- not just for Game Six of the 1975 World Series, but virtually every game he played in his big league career.

Yes, that's right: Baseball's substance abuse scandals did not begin during the steroid era. In 1970, Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" arguably offered the first public confirmation of drugs in baseball, primarily alcohol and greenies (amphetamines), although Doc Ellis memorably insisted that he pitched a no hitter while journeying on LSD.

By the mid 1980s, it was cocaine -- and Enos Cabell remarked in court that it made him a better player. Doubtless, Carbo would disagree.

I was watching this game back in '75, none the wiser that Carbo had spent the day drinking beer and smoking dope. Cubs fans, take note: It required four World Series appearances by the Red Sox between titles, so get out there, pay your dues, and ... wait, what's that?

You've been to the World Series how many times since 1908?

Seven?

Never mind.

As for the decade of the 1970s, see the Big Hair and Plastic Grass web site. I also blogged about this book in 2013: Big Hair and Plastic Grass. Get a copy and read it. It's richly entertaining.

Damn Yankees.

Baseball's a given for me, and long ago, I became an American League fan for purely contrarian reasons. My friends all cheered for senior cirucit teams, mostly the Cincinnati Reds, and a few for the St. Louis Cardinals (the Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves didn't come along to claim allegiance until cable television).

That wasn't good enough for me, so I chose a team in the other league,as far away as possible, and primarily because the Oakland A's wore green and gold, they won out over the Angels.

That was around 1969 or 1970, and I've supported the A's ever since.

Since Oakland seldom appears in the World Series, I usually root for the American League representative and call it good. That is, until this year. It looks as though the New York Yankees will defeat the Philadelphia Phillies and take the title back to my favorite league, but I feel absolutely no joy in it, and hope the Phils can muster a Red Sox-style comeback against the machine, however unlikely.

Considering the voluminous money and sheer corporate immensity of it all, backing the Yankees is like favoring Bud Light (in former times, US Steel was the preferred analogy), and I can no longer perform the mental gymnastics necessary to rationalize it.

Here's to Cliff Lee. Perhaps we'll see a Game Six. Damn Yankees.

October 17, 1989: "The day the World Series stood still."

I was in Ireland when the Loma Prieta earthquake brought the 1989 World Series to a halt, with my Oakland A's leading the San Francisco Giants two games to none. It took ten days for the series (won by the A's in a sweep) to resume, and by that time, I'd transitioned to Spain, eventually catching up on events with the help of the International Herald Tribune newspaper.

Here's an account from the Oakland Tribune: The day the World Series stood still.

The earthquake halted Game Three of the 1989 series on October 17. Today is the 20th of October, with the Yanks and Angels set to play Game 4 of the 2009 League Championship Series, and the World Series not even slated to begin until October 28, after the opening of the NBA season. Crazy.

It's been a week for anniversaries, but the biggest is yet to come: November 9 will mark twenty years since the Berlin Wall started tumbling.