Let’s Go Braves – The Road to the 2021 World Series

KINGPIN: It’s not always about the money, Spiderman. It’s about the Mets baby, love the Mets, alright baby, let’s go, get a home run baby, love the Mets, let’s go Mets—

ZACH: Sorry, Kingpin. Maybe next year. This year, the ring’s going somewhere it hasn’t gone in over 25 years.

BEN INGRAM, BRAVES RADIO NETWORK: 0-2 on the way. Chopper, out to Danzby. Danzby throws to first base, is this happening?! It is! The Atlanta Braves are world champions! The Atlanta Braves have won the 2021 World Series in six games over the Houston Astros. Pure euphoria down on the field.

ZACH: The Braves are world champions of 2021. How did we get here?

The season ended with the Giants and Dodgers both having the best record in baseball–Giants with 107 wins, Dodgers 106. But because of the format of the MLB postseason, only one team can win the division and be seeded into the tournament. Six divisions across baseball means six teams in the postseason. Four additional teams—two teams each from the National League and the American League that have the highest records but didn’t clinch their division—qualify to play in the Wild Card games. A one game showdown determines which team faces the winningest team in their respective league. In the NL, the 106-56 Dodgers faced the 90-72 Cardinals in L.A. With two outs in the ninth, game tied 1 to 1, the game was capped off by a stellar walk-off homer from Chris Taylor to win 3 to 1.

BRIAN ANDERSON, TBS: Two balls and a strike, the count on Taylor. Reyes fires—swing and a drive! Deep left field! This is way back! Walk ‘em off! Chris Taylor!

ZACH: NLDS Series. Dodgers versus Giants. Braves versus Brewers. The Braves in particular made a great run to make it to the postseason in the last ten games of the regular season, winning eight of their last ten to overtake the Phillies, a team that lost six of their last ten games. The Braves ended up sending the Brewers packing in just four games, advancing to the NLCS.

Thursday, October 14th. A cool night in San Francisco. Every other series in the divisional round had been decided at this point; Dodgers/Giants was the only series that went to a deciding game 5. In the ninth inning, with the game tied 1-1, Cody Bellinger sends a hit to shallow right field to allow Turner to score. 2-1 Dodgers. Giants have to score to at least stay in the game. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, this happens:

BRIAN ANDERSON, TBS: No balls, two strikes, and Flores… did he go? He did! And the game ends! A swinging strike three! Gabe Morales rings him up, the game is over, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are heading to the National League Championship Series.

I didn’t think he went. On the slider from Max… Gabe Morales thought he did.

RON DARLING: Boy, what a way to end a game this… ohhhh man, he didn’t go. I don’t think he went. Can’t end a game that way.

ZACH: Here’s Weinberg senior Jake Lyons and McCormick senior Sheldon Wong, both Giants fans and some of the biggest baseball fans I know.

SHELDON: I mean, how else do you react to something like that? Anger, I mean it was obviously anger at first, and then it was like—there’s nothing that you can do. Kinda just turns to sadness then, I guess. I mean, that’s kinda how… you’d expect to respond. I mean, it is kinda like, I guess different because obviously there’s never been a moment that big, and we lost on a missed call or something like that. I guess surreal is kinda the wrong word… really just upset.

JAKE: Yeah, it was… yeah, that was not fun. I mean, at that point I was already kind of down, like I’d already begun to accept that we were probably going to lose given that Flores in his career was 0 for 17 in his career against Scherzer or something stupid like that. I just… yeah. When it first happened, when I first saw it, I was like, “oh, he probably just went,” but then I saw the replay and I just… yelled very loudly because, well obviously… And then it just quickly evaporated into deep sadness.

SHELDON: Yeah, I was sad. I didn’t go to class the next day, I was sad.

JAKE: Realistically, if he calls it a non-swing, we probably just lose anyway, but to end it on something like that is just… it hurts a little extra, I guess.

ZACH: But who really knows what could have happened had that check swing resulted in a ball like it should have? Although it leaves a series where the two teams with the best records this year in baseball faced each other on a horribly sour note; the chips fell where they did and the Dodgers moved on to the NLCS against the Braves… a series where they fell short four games to two to Atlanta.

That left the Atlanta Braves to face… the Houston Astros, likely one of the most hated franchises in all of Major League Baseball for their multiple cheating scandals in recent years among their multiple World Series runs, making it three times since 2017 and winning once. For once, most people were cheering on the Braves, a team that hasn’t won an NL pennant since the 90s.

SHELDON: The Astros are very close to the Dodgers in terms of teams I dislike the most.

JAKE: Yes.

SHELDON: Braves are probably one of my… I guess—well, I don’t really have a least favorite team other than the Dodgers and the Yankees and the Astros. So really I don’t care who wins, but I do like the Braves a little bit because of Freddie Freeman, because of—well, used to be Acuña but he’s obviously hurt. They’ve always been a team that’s felt easy to root for in terms of the players that they have.

ZACH: …and in game 6 last night, it happened. Atlanta shut out Houston, seven to nothing. Atlanta are this year’s champions of the world.

So now that this season is over, we now look ahead to next season. Sportsbook odds are already out for who will win the 2022 World Series, with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Baltimore Orioles at the bottom of the list with 200-1 odds; the list is capped with the favorite Dodgers at 11-2, Houston at 7-1, and the newly-crowned champion Braves at 9-1.

What do our Giants fans think will happen next year?

ZACH: So now that this season is over, looking ahead to next season, do you see the Giants taking it next year?

JAKE: Oh boy, well… I don’t know. Given how the team played this year, I wouldn’t rule it out. But there’s definitely a lot of players who may not be returning, like Crawford signed like… there’s Posey, there’s Bryant, there’s… I’m forgetting now, but there’s a couple more guys who most likely—not all of them will come back. Belt is another. But I think a lot of the young guys this year showed a lot of promise and showed they have what it takes, so next year, maybe not, but I think that young talent in the clubhouse is good enough that, in coming years, based off of how guys played this year, we’ll definitely continue to be competitive.

ZACH: The Giants are listed at 16-1 to win next year, for those keeping track. Who really knows what’s to come next year, though? Baseball is constantly changing in terms of its players and team staff. That’s the beauty of the sport—you never really know what’s going to happen next year.

For WNUR News, I’m Zach McCrary.