Undeserved Victory

In baseball playoffs there's something called a wild card team. A wild card team is a team that's not good enough to make it to the playoffs. But for profit reasons, they're allowed to play a one game, winner-take-all game. Whoever wins goes forward. That format is inherently unfair and stupid and contradicts the regular season during which there is never a one-game series, as well as contradicting the spirit of the game.

This years the Washington Nationals won the World Series. They were also the winning wild card team. The only reason they won the wild card game is because of an error the other team made. This is why a one-game series should never be allowed. The Nationals then played the Dodgers in a five-game series and won. I'm not sure how. The Dodgers were the better team. While that was going on, the Braves were playing the Cardinals. The Braves should have won, but their star rookie made two mistakes in game one that cost Atlanta the game and ended up costing them the series. The result is that the Nationals, who made it in through an error, ended up playing another team who only made it that far through another team's error. The Nationals somehow beat the cardinals in a seven-game series and went on the defeat the Houston Astros in seven games in the World Series. I watched some of it but not all of it.

There's a life lesson in all this. The Nationals didn't deserve to be in the playoffs. They should never have defeated the Dodgers. They should have lost to the Braves, whom they never got to play because of those rookie mistakes in game one. They should never have defeated the Astros, a superior team. MLB.com had a contest to pick the playoff winners. I don't watch American League baseball, but somehow my bracket was perfect for that side. On the National League side, errors by the Braves and the Brewers blew it in the first round.

There's this bit of wisdom from the Bible that sometimes the tail ends up being the head or the head ends up being the tail. That's what happened this year in baseball. Sometimes, life just works out that way. Sometimes, you win even though you don't really deserve it. Sometimes, you get the break you shouldn't get. Sometimes, things just go your way in spite of yourself. When that happens, I think you should enjoy it. Don't get proud and act like you did it yourself. Enjoy it, but stay humble enough to know it wasn't really you. There was something else at work in it.

Have a great weekend.