Baseball’s underdogs muscle past the money

This is the Theme of the Week edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a digest of our top commentary published every Sunday. Follow us on Instag [Bloomberg]( This is the Theme of the Week edition of [Bloomberg Opinion Today](, a digest of our top commentary published every Sunday. Follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [X](, [Threads]( and [Facebook](. I’ve been a baseball fan my entire life: I grew up playing it, going to games at [Three Rivers Stadium]( with my mom and [the Vet]( with my dad, and while my fandom ebbs and flows as a busy adult, I always come back to it, even though [being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan is painful](. But my husband, a Yankees diehard who commandeers the television for 162 *&$%@ games, got burned this year, too — his team spent $204 million more in payroll than mine and didn’t make the postseason, either. “For a team long committed to the idea that money can buy superstars and success, it’s an uncomfortable position,” Adam Minter says of the Yankees’ [expensive failure of a season](. Turns out that bad chemistry, injuries and human frailty do make a difference. We’re now two games into this year’s edition of the World Series — the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers are locked at one game apiece — a [matchup]( between wild-card underdogs that pretty much no one saw coming on Opening Day. March feels like a million years ago, and yet … the season sort of flew by, didn’t it? Conor Sen writes that Major League Baseball made being a fan a lot more fun again when it made some big changes: “[The new rules speed up play]( and encourage more action within games — and thank goodness for that,” he says. It wasn’t just fans who benefited: “It also turned out that the Diamondbacks, with some of the [fastest]( athletes in MLB, were perfectly designed for the new baseball rules,” Adam Minter writes in another column. “By mid-season, they were leading the National League in several [metrics that benefit from speed](, making them a dangerous and entertaining team.” Baseball traditionalists who don't like seeing the D-backs in the World Series (they only won 84 regular-season games, just over half) need to calm down, he says — both attendance at ballparks and streaming audiences were up this season, a welcome reversal of downward trends. As for the Rangers, they remain one of six MLB teams that have never won a title. Even the Pirates won it all in 1979 (I won’t tell you if I was alive or not). Whatever the money tells you, everyone loves an underdog — and a little more excitement on the diamond. More Baseball Reading: - [Baseball Fans Should Root for Gambling’s Expansion]( — Adam Minter - [If Shohei Ohtani Gets $600 Million, He Should Thank Satchel Paige]( — Stephen Mihm - [Will AI in Baseball Become the Next Moneyball?]( — Adam Minter Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](