Below is an excerpt from this week’s Kristol Clear newsletter, written by WEEKLY STANDARD editor Bill Kristol. Sign up here to receive Kristol Clear in your inbox every Monday morning.
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Quite a World Series we’re having! (By the way, I’d made the point a while ago in one of these missives that there was something amusingly and boastfully American about calling a contest among American teams in a distinctively American sport the “World Series.” But a reader, Steven W. Balster, wrote in to inform me: “And tell the boss, it’s called the World Series because it was originally sponsored by the New York World , and then got shortened to just the World Series.” So much for my grand sociological-cultural speculation! (Though in a way my point still holds, I suppose, since Americans don’t know that origin and do seem to like the implication that winning our national pastime is a world-historic event.)
In any case…let me report on the results of the two contests we had to pick the World Series teams. In the contest at the beginning of the season, in April, twelve people predicted the Cubs winning the series. But only one, Janis H. Evans, predicted they would face the Indians. So win or lose for the Cubs, she is the winner of the first contest, hands down. Incidentally, Ms. Evans picked them to win in seven games. If that’s the result Wednesday night, given that Ms. Evans made this prediction in April, I think I’ll be asking her to accompany a few of us on a trip to Las Vegas…
As for the more recent contest, 25 readers picked the Cubs to win the whole thing. But none predicted they’d face the Indians. Eight readers picked the Indians to win—and of them four readers correctly predicted they would face the Cubs. So we have four winners of at least a silver prize, and if the Indians do prevail, all four of you (one of whom is my colleague, Jim Swift—do federal rules and regulations permit him to participate in this game?) will get a YUGE prize.
I have lots of pseudo-deep thoughts on the nature of baseball, some of which you’ve glimpsed already, that I’ll save for next week’s newsletter. I’ll close this one by recommending Tom Boswell’s piece here paying well-deserved tribute to Indians’ manager Terry Francona, and his broader tribute to the virtues of baseball here . I’ve got to cut the newsletter short now, since the aforementioned Jim Swift (who hails from Cleveland) has the job of getting it out, and we’ve got only a short window between his recovering from crying himself to sleep last night and his departing for Cleveland to prepare for the onerous task of attending Game Six tomorrow evening as special WEEKLY STANDARD correspondent! (Note to corporate bosses: His friends out there got him this ticket; it’s not coming out of our “incidentals” budget.)
So to Jim, safe travels, to Cubs and Indians fans good luck, and to all of us, thank you to baseball for a great post-season when we needed it most. As for my thoughts and my colleagues’ on Comey, Clinton, Trump and everything else–stay tuned to weeklystandard.com for the next eight days…
