It didn't turn out the way I wanted. My Mets had a promising start, then, as has long been their wont, imploded. That left me with two possibilities: my old home town's team (although it didn't exist until long after I left there), the Rays; and my wife's team, the Red Sox. The Sox knocked the Rays out of contention, then were knocked out by the Astros. Meanwhile the Braves won the National League pennant.
How do I choose? Atlanta and Houston are both cities in which I've spent some time, and like. They're both islands of progressivism in otherwise mostly conservative states, although Texas has a proud liberal tradition (I remember Governor Ann Richards giving the keynote address at a convention I attended in Houston in which she suggested the insurance industry needed more effective regulation and, when only one man clapped, said, "You're a lo-o-onely feller!"). I also remember hearing some great blues at a little place called the Reddi Room on White Oak in Houston.
I'll forgive Atlanta for having, at the height of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s adopted the most tone-deaf slogan imaginable - "The city too busy to hate." (Sorry, can't make it to the Klan rally; my company has to file a 10-K.) I have fond memories of an "Ecumenical Conference on Urbanization and Technology" I attended in 1966 at the Emory University campus, during which I met and had a short but inspiring conversation with the then head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a young firebrand named John Lewis. Years later, I had my blues experience at Blues Harbor in Underground Atlanta, where I heard Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and got to meet and talk with him after his set.
So, who do I pick to win the Series? I'm a Mets fan, and they're a National League team, so, despite the Braves' often having been the Mets' nemesis, I'm going with the Braves. For what it's worth (probably not much), as I write this they have a 5-0 lead in the bottom of the third in game one. Oh, and since the Braves started as a Boston team, my wife has some skin in this game, too.
Whoever wins, though, I won't be that disappointed.
