They picked Cinderella for last place too, and she did all right. But even in a fairy tale, no one expects Prince Charming to be that ungainly lad who'd been kept in the cellar for the past three years.
The improbable is for fables; baseball, right now at least, is the art of the impossible. In a century of the sport, no team had vaulted in a single year from worst in its league to best. Last week two teams did. And over the weekend, the Minnesota Twins (last in the American League West in 1990) and the Atlanta Braves (cellar dwellers in the National League West for three seasons) played the first two games in the "Worst World Series."
Fans hoped it would be one of the best. Seven close games would offer a shiny showcase for two nicely matched teams that took a steep new route to the top. After a decade or so of balky, highly paid superstars, the Twins and Braves built their franchises on has-beens and gonna-bes. Call it postmodern baseball.
In the free-agent era, when players can sign with the highest bidder, owners find it tough to produce a consistent winner. Yes, the Oakland A's reached the Series the past three years. But a $37 million payroll this season couldn't keep the dynasty from turning nasty. The A's limped and sulked, finishing 11 games behind the Twins.
The specter of free agency can make even a shrewd organization nervous. The Pittsburgh Pirates, with a core of fine young stars, got that now-or-never feeling this year. Why? Because slugger Bobby Bonilla is expected to become a zillionaire elsewhere this winter, and Most Valuable Player candidate Barry Bonds may walk next October. Pittsburgh, in a modest TV market, certainly can't afford them both. So the bucks -- and the Bucs -- stop here.
In baseball, as in other businesses, two cardinal rules apply: be smart and be lucky. The postmodern era adds: but first you must be inept. If a franchise is bad enough long enough, it gets to draft some good young talent (as the Braves did with Steve Avery, David Justice and John Smoltz). Then, if it is canny, it will trade one pricey player for two or three prospects (as the Twins did last year, losing Frank Viola to the Mets and gaining three blossoming pitchers in return). Finally, if fortune is kind, the team will find a few middle-income free agents ready for superior years (Atlanta's Terry Pendleton, Minnesota's Jack Morris and Chili Davis). The 162-game plan: get the kids before they cost too much and the veterans because they know so much. Well, it worked.
In the American League championship, the Twins shrugged off Toronto in a five-game series that for most TV viewers was overshadowed by a sorrier sporting spectacle on Capitol Hill: the Senators vs. the dodger. Truth to tell, the AL snoozathon didn't need the Clarence Thomas hearings to upstage it; a church social could have done the job. Here, after all, were two teams from above the timber line playing in domed stadiums of spaceship sterility on synthetic carpets that made the games look like Brobdingnagian billiards. Only one contest was close all the way. Only one rooting interest tickled fans' fancies: seeing the Twins earn their spot in baseball's unlikeliest finale.