Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Aloha, World Series

Tomorrow evening, the World Series will get under way in Florida. As any Phillies fan or Citizen of Tampa-St. Pete can attest, the 2008 World Series is unlike any in recent memory. One team has a grand total of 1 World Series title. The other is still living its first winning season. A good number of players involved in the Series hadn't even been born in 1980 when the Phillies won their only World Championship.

This Series will be special for another reason: There will be a player born in Hawaii involved! Shane Victorino will become only the 8th person born in America's 50th state to play in the Fall Classic. He joins Mike Lum (1976 Reds), Ron Darling and Sid Fernandez (1986 Mets), Lenn Sakata (1983 Orioles), Milt Wilcox (1984 Tigers), Charlie Hough (1978 Dodgers), and Benny Agbayani (1999 Mets) as Hawaiian-born Series participants.

For a state with year-round baseball weather, its kind of shocking that more baseball players haven't come out of the Aloha State. There really haven't been many. Football is King in the Islands. But, this week, sports fans from Kona to Kauai will be cheering for "The Flyin Hawaiian." The Honolulu sports pages will be filled with stories and images of the local hero. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Victorino jersey or two around town.

Best of luck to you Shane. You've brought the most distant regions of the Nation under the spell of the National Pastime. Mahalo!

1 comment:

SFE Rabbit said...

I say we allow players to take steroids. I always thought steroids biggest turn off was the shrunken testacles and bacne, however, the amount of play these athletes still get proves it is an insufficient consequence. Obviously, the fact that it is illegal, cheating, blah blah blah is also inadequate to stop steroid use. So allow people to use steroids, but add in moveable outfield walls. for players that are on steroids, allow the walls to be moved through some sort of festivity- amount of hot dogs eaten by the dh through the at bat, a cheer-o-meter (to bring in the crowds), or maybe some good old fashioned Risk- the game of world domination. Risk i think would be to time consuming though.