The Art of Luck

If you’re so inclined, Molly Knight and I did a little baseball playoff podcast; I will try to post it here later, but, even better, you can listen to it right now over at Molly’s most excellent newsletter.

The MLB postseason is underway! Let’s take a look at Day 1:

Texas 4, Tampa Bay 0

Nobody showed up. I mean NOBODY showed up for the Rays, the offense didn’t show up, the defense didn’t show up, the fans didn’t show up, it was pretty much as disastrous as a game can be for a team.

Start with the fans, I suppose — the announced attendance was 19,704, making this the most poorly attended postseason game since, wait for it, Game 7 of the 1919 World Series in Cincinnati. One of the cardinal rules of sportswriting, I have learned through hard experience, is that you never criticize the fans. Fans don’t owe anything to anybody. If they think Tampa Bay’s stadium is awful, or they’re largely uninterested in this team, or they don’t buy into the expanded playoffs, or they don’t want to spend a ton of money going to the games, or any other reason, that’s a failure of the team and the league to convince them otherwise.

You don’t blame moviegoers for not going to see “The Haunted Mansion.” You blame the people who made and promoted the movie.

As it turns out,