Small ball took a beating. World Series Game 4 made for a forgettable, unaesthetic evening, what with its 13 pitchers and an 11–7 final in favor of Texas that camouflaged the rout that it truly was.
It seems its entire purpose was to snicker at the over-the-top love for small ball in Game 2, when Arizona joined the 1908 Cubs, masters of the Deadball Era and of Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance mellifluous fame, as the only teams with 12 singles, three sac bunts and one stolen base in a World Series game. It was so long ago that crossword puzzles, traffic lights and the Panama Canal didn’t exist, and fathers named their sons Mordecai and Orval.
For a brief moment, such esoterica were the future of baseball, with the young, athletic Diamondbacks dropping bunts and stealing bases to leverage the new rules, or so went the armchair swooning over that 9–1 Arizona win.
