If you think about sports as a television show rather than some fit people running around and doing things, Game 1 of the World Series was a terrible idea. Yes, the series is well cast, and the production value is solid by contemporary standards, but you just cannot give away your best stuff in the pilot episode.
Fortunately, by the rules of our diminishing yet still shared reality, Game 1 was an extraordinary epic. Freddie Freeman pointing his bat toward the sky after hitting the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history—straight up, rather than in the direction of the game-winner he’d just vaporized—told everyone watching that whatever else happens in these next several days, a baseball event is coming from on high. On this night, and maybe for the next week, football could eat what we in the agricultural sciences call shit. Baseball is, for the moment, back.
