Hi all.  Here’s how I see baseball on this Friday, November 3.

The anticlimactic seventh game of the World Series was hardly surprising considering the madness of games 2 and 5, and the taut battles that were games 1, 4 and 6.  It would have been too much to ask game 7 to come up to the level of those games.  This was closer to game 3, also started and lost by Yu Darvish.  The Astros put up 5 runs in the first 2 innings against him and the outcome was never in doubt from there-for all except one man.  For 25 defeated Dodgers and 24 triumphant underdog Astros the season ended on a pop fly to the outfield. For one Astro there was a final act, not seen in much of the country because of the late hour at which the game ended. Their shortstop Carlos Correa, the earliest drafter Puerto Rican native  proposed to his girlfriend Daniella Rodriguez, a former Miss Texas USA. At 23, he now owns a World Series ring while she owns a diamond.

The highlight of the game was George Springer, the Astros’ center fielder and leadoff man who had struck out 4 times in game 1 of the World Series.  In game 7 he homered in his 4th consecutive game.  His 2-run shot made it 5-0 and had TV sets clicking off all over the country.

Thus it ends, not with a bang but with a popup.  Neither the Indians nor the Cubs made this year’s World Series.  Surprisingly the Cubs came closer than the Indians, in spite of the Tribe’s 22-game winning streak in August. Even more surprisingly the Astros defeated the Dodgers who in late August were 91–36 but were pedestrian after that point.  Briefly they looked like their earlier selves when they took 7 out of 8 en route to the World Series but they were beaten by an undermanned Astros’ team who somehow pulled off the shocker a la 1969 Mets.

Closer to home, this season I was able to branch out and write about the occasional minor league game as well as games from around the majors.  This was something I had considered from the very first when I began writing this column in 2015.  It took until this season for me to be able to trace sufficient information to write about minor league games when I did.  I hope some of you enjoyed those pieces and will read this blog next season.  Until then, I plan to write occasional pieces as I have in the past few winters.  Shorter takes can be found in my Facebook group, also called Baseball As I See It. If you aren’t already a member, all are welcome to join.