THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016
Without a dog in the major league baseball playoff fight this year, it could have been fun to watch the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox play in the World Series.
Could have been.
SINCE THE Seattle Mariners came up a few games short, and being a bit of a Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs fan, why not root for those teams?
Boston was trying to send David Ortiz into retirement with a fourth World Series title, but the Red Sox were swept into the offseason by the Cleveland Indians on Monday night.
The Chicago Cubs jumped out to a two-game lead against the San Francisco Giants before losing in Game 3 in 13 innings late Monday night.
Some seven years ago, with the Mariners hosting the Red Sox in a weekend series, and having the chance to actually take in a few games in a series, I made the trip to Seattle to watch Ortiz take on the Mariners.
Only problem with that was Ortiz — who was in a bit of a slump in 2009 — was given the weekend off by the team and didn’t play. He still took batting practice — and trust me, he was still driving the ball all over the field — but never took an at-bat.
There were other trips to see the Red Sox, one when Ortiz hit a three-run home run off Felix Hernandez in the first inning on Memorial Day in which I drove all day and night back home. Another when Jon Lester shut down the M’s in September when there wasn’t much for the Mariners to play for.
Each game had plenty of mixed emotions as you really didn’t care which team was going to win that night.
A few years later, Ortiz was back to hitting everything he saw, making me wonder if he’ll opt to change his mind after having such a good season in 2016.
THE LOVE of the Cubs is a little different for me. It’s not so much this current roster of players because outside of games on national television, I might not be able to even tell you a single player on their roster.
As a kid, you could always count on the Cubs being on WGN, a channel that we actually had on our cable. Home games were always in the afternoon and growing up, I always wanted to be like Ryne Sandberg, a Spokane native and someone that was born the day before I was.
Watching Andre Dawson, Leon Durham, Shawon Dunston, Mark Grace and others almost became something you did during the summer months.
There hasn’t been that many times in the fall that they’ve been expected to win since I was a kid.
Maybe that kid inside of me still wants to see that happen since my team is out of this one.
Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.