Call it Major League Baseball’s cruelest month.
Night after night in September fans in all corners of the country — from Boston to Minneapolis to Los Angles to Tampa — live and die with every pitch as pennant races head to their dramatic conclusions.
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But while they are also loving life in Philadelphia and Chicago and New York (in Queens, at least), things aren’t so rosy elsewhere.
With just eight playoff participants, the fewest of any North American professional sports league, baseball wields a harsh punishment for its worst teams — they have to keep playing.
On Aug. 15, there were already 13 different clubs 11 games or more behind the wild-card leaders in the American and National Leagues, including the Nationals and the Orioles. That’s 40 games and six long weeks before the finish line. So what keeps them going?
“We just want to get better, especially since we’ve had a rough five months already,” said Nats manager Manny Acta. “At times because some of these teams we play are in the race there’s more attention to the games and maybe people perceive that we get up for those games more. But I don’t think so. I have a bunch of kids now and they’re going to play hard the rest of the way.”
It isn’t always that easy. After an Aug. 11 trade from Cincinnati, slugger Adam Dunn is in the middle of his first real pennant race in the NL West with the Arizona Diamondbacks. In an interview over the weekend with Fox Sports reporter Ken Rosenthal, Dunn mentioned previous September games where he sometimes was more interested in Sunday’s NFL scores than his own game. A veteran secure in his job status can get away with that, of course. Younger players? Not so much.
“The whole goal is to try and finish strong and give the fans something to look forward to next year,” said Nats outfielder Elijah Dukes, who set a personal goal of reaching 20 home runs. “That’s it. We’re just going out to win every day.”
