The World Series begins tonight. The Houston Astros, first seed in the AL, host the Philadelphia Phillies, sixth seed in the NL.

Houston and Philadelphia dominated their respective league championship series.

The Astros are the third team to sweep both the division and league series in the same year. The others are the 2007 Colorado Rockies and the 2014 Kansas City Royals. Warning to Houston: The Rockies and Royals did not win the World Series in those years.

The Royals are no longer the last AL team to win back-to-back pennants (2014 and 2015). That is now Houston (2021 and 2022).

ALCS – Astros Sweep the Yankees (4-0): The Yankees are accustomed to losing to the Astros in the ALCS. This is the third time in the last six years.

2017 ALCS: I cheered when the Astros beat the Yankees in 2017. David beat Goliath, as best captured in this iconic picture of Houston second baseman Jose Altuve next to Yankee Aaron Judge who had just hit a double.

The Astros were a team of destiny in 2017. Houston outfielder George Springer was featured on a 2014 cover of Sports Illustrated that predicted a World Series win for the Astros in 2017.

And it happened. After dispensing with the Yankees in the ALCS, the Astros went on to beat the Dodgers in the 2017 World Series.

For his stellar regular season, Jose Altuve beat out Aaron Judge for AL MVP. Judge was named Rookie of the Year.

Former Royal Carlos Beltran was on the Astros roster and announced his retirement after the Series. This was not the last we would hear about this.

2019 ALCS: The Astros again beat the Yankees, and Jose Altuve was the ALCS MVP. Houston lost the World Series to the Washington Nationals.

Soon after the 2019 Series, the news broke that Houston had cheated during the 2017 season and playoffs – using electronic sign-stealing that was passed on to batters at the plate by banging on a trash can in the dugout. Some heads rolled (no players) and the team was fined $5 million. The New York Mets had just announced that Carlos Beltran would be their manager for 2020, but in MLB’s report on the scandal, the only player implicated by name was Beltran. His managing career was over before it started.

2022 ALCS: This year, the Astros won 106 games, and the Yankees won 99. A slight edge to Houston, but it was actually worse considering when the Yankees won most of their games. New York was the hottest team in baseball as of July 8 with a record of 61-23. After that, they went 38-40. Their late-season fade was masked by the excitement of Aaron Judge’s successful race to pass Roger Maris.

In the ALCS, the holes in the Yankees lineup and bullpen were exposed by the superior Astros who dispatched the Yankees in a four-game sweep. The mood in New York as interpreted by one pundit on Twitter: “Yankee Stadium sounds so quiet on TV that you can hear the fans raising their middle fingers.”

[Yankee Trivia: That tweet reminds me of a Billy Martin story. Mickey Mantle said that Martin’s temper was so bad that Billy was the only guy he knew who “could hear someone give him the finger.”]

In a rare poor performance in the postseason, Jose Altuve went 0-25 in the ALDS and ALCS before finally getting a hit. Payback for the sign-stealing in 2017?

Did not matter. The Astros are deep. Although they had lost two stalwarts via free agency (Carlos Correa and George Springer), they were replaced by Yordan Alvarez (two game-winning homers in the ALDS) and Jeremy Pena (MVP of the ALCS).

And the pitching may be better than the hitting. The regular season team ERA was 2.90, the lowest for any AL team in the designated hitter era.

The Astros will be tough to beat. And they won’t need to cheat. A mantra that rhymes.

NLCS – Phillies Over the Padres (4-1): The top four seeds in the National League were eliminated by San Diego (#5 seed) and Philadelphia (#6 seed). The Phillies barely made the playoffs, finishing one game ahead of the Brewers. And now they are headed to the World Series after beating San Diego in the NLCS, four games to one.

It is a surprise to many that this #6 seed with only 87 regular-season wins has won three playoff rounds against St. Louis, Atlanta and San Diego. But if you look at the payroll and the stars that free agency has brought in, it is not much of a mystery. Some of the players may have underperformed or been injured during the season, but most are performing at their salary level in the postseason.

The man responsible? Owner John Middleton who sold his family’s tobacco business in 2007 for nearly $3 billion. He has been a willing spender in the free agent market, and the Phillies have the fourth highest payroll in baseball (trailing only the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers). A prime example is the $527 million spent on contracts for Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber and Zack Wheeler. All three were instrumental in getting the Phillies to the World Series, and Harper (below) was MVP of the NLCS.

Middleton acknowledges that his spending may be “a little bit stupid,” but “It’s not grounded in business logic, it’s not grounded in baseball analytics. I think it’s your passion as a fan that kind of fuels your ambition. It certainly fuels my ambition for this team.”

They are calling it “Red October” in Philly. It’s their first postseason since 2011. The long-suffering-fans are ecstatic (click here).

World Series Matchup: Based on the stats, Houston should beat Philadelphia. Both teams have excellent hitting. But Houston is better defensively. And if the pitching remains consistent with the regular season, the Astros have an advantage – their season ERA of 2.90 is better by a run over the Phillies (3.97). Lots of sabermetric numbers also point to the Astros.

But numbers don’t always prevail. After all, the Phillies were the statistical underdog this year in the Wild Card series, the NLDS and the NLCS – and they won each time. Why not the World Series?

There is one historical number that is harder to put aside. The regular season win disparity. Houston won 106 games to Philadelphia’s 87, a 19-win disparity. The only time a team won a World Series with a season differential that high was in 1906 when the 93-win Chicago White Sox beat the 116-win Chicago Cubs (a 23-win disparity).

I’ll play devil’s advocate and give three reasons why this may be a false indicator.

1. There has been a recent postseason series where a team won in spite of a 22-win disparity. It was not the World Series, but close enough. It was in this year’s NLDS when San Diego (89 wins) beat the Dodgers (111 wins).

2. In 2019, Houston (107 wins) enjoyed a 14-run disparity with its World Series rival, the Washington Nationals (93 wins). The Nationals won. It’s not a 19-run disparity, but maybe within the margin of error.

3. Where there is a small sample size (best of seven games) mixed with the tension of the postseason, stuff happens. It’s not all stats. It’s also handling the pressure. For wise words on that, I return to that 1906 World Series.

In its coverage in 1906, the Washington Post sought the opinion of some baseball experts on the chances of the White Sox overcoming their 23-win disparity. One of the experts enlisted was Ted Sullivan, described by the Post as “one of balldom’s greatest judges of diamond merit.” Hot Stove has previously featured Ted Sullivan because he is the subject of a fun biography by KC authors Pat O’Neill and Tom Coffman (Ted Sullivan: Barnacle of Baseball). For Hot Stove’s blurb on the book, click here.

Ted Sullivan had many Kansas City connections, starting with his college days in the 1870s at St. Mary’s College 90 miles west of KC. One of Ted’s classmates was Charlie Comiskey, and the two of them were instrumental in the formation of the American League. Sullivan is said to be the game’s first player agent, a top scout of talent, a baseball evangelist and founder of several leagues. He coined the term “fan” and was among the first to suggest the designated hitter. Damon Runyan dubbed him the “Barnacle of Baseball.”

In the 1906 Post article, Ted encouraged bettors to look past the Cubs’ regular season superiority. “Because the Cubs won by a margin of twenty or more games, it is no sign they can defeat the Sox. It is all very good for a club to carry everything in front of it during the season, but those world championship games require players of mettle. I am not saying that the Cubs are not such. Chance’s men make up the most wonderful aggregation of modern times. In these few games where every man is bending every fiber of his system to win, not more than 40 percent of real ball playing will enter into victory. Fully 60 percent of the game will be nerve.”

Of course Ted probably had some bias. The White Sox owner was his old friend Charlie Comiskey.

I’m also biased (key words – trash can). I want the Phillies to win, so I will accept Ted’s logic for 2022. Go Phillies!

[The story of Ted Sullivan and the 1906 World Series was told again in a terrific Washington Post article this week. Thanks to reader David Schlee for the heads-up.]

1980 NLCS – Philadelphia v. Houston: The Phillies and Astros have played once before in the postseason – in the NLCS in 1980 (Houston moved to the AL in 2013). This best-of-five series is considered a classic because four of the five games went into extra innings. The combined home run total for the two teams was one (not a typo). Good mlb.com article this week, titled “Can this World Series match the madness of the 1980 Phillies-Astros NLCS?”. Ted Sullivan would say yes.

Philadelphia beat Houston and went on to win the 1980 World Series, four games to two, over the Kansas City Royals who were making their first trip to the Series.

Sports Equinox: This is that time of the year when I open up my “Score” app and see active games in all the major pro sports. On the night of Game 2 of the ALCS, there was an NFL Thursday night game. The NBA and NHL had full slates of games as their new seasons got underway. The Axios Sports newsletter deemed the night to be a “Sports Equinox” of overlapping seasons, visualized by…

Before Leland, Jill and Richard get on my case, I did not forget soccer. I’m sure there were also pro soccer games, but they aren’t shown in the Axios graphic. And I want to talk about soccer. Tomorrow night, the Kansas City Current will be playing in the first NWSL title game to be televised live in primetime. They play the Portland Thorns in Washington DC at 7:00 (KC time). CBS TV (Channel 5). Go Current!

Charlie Wheeler (RIP): Earlier this week, I wrote about the passing of two of Kansas City’s finest nonagenarians, Paul Vardeman (92) and Bert Bates (96). Then on Wednesday, I got word that former KC mayor Charlie Wheeler had died at 96.

Charlie was a great character in our city history and lots of progress was made because of his public service. Most of his tributes will focus on his time as mayor, but my key memory relates to his service as Western Judge of the Jackson County Court (the administrative body that ran the county before the Executive/Legislature structure was set up in 1972). Charlie and his fellow judges Charles Curry and Alex Petrovic put together a bond election in 1967 that included the dual stadiums that we have now been attending for a half-century at the Truman Sports Complex. Below, Charlie (left) and Alex Petrovic at the Royals opener in 2013.

I often crossed political paths with Charlie back in the 1970s. Hot Stove covered his political career and work on the stadiums in Hot Stove #97 (click here). I gave Charlie a copy of that Hot Stove, and he must have liked what I said about him. He asked for 20 more copies to give out (Charlie didn’t do email). Happy to oblige.

In his JimmyC column this week, Jim Fitzpatrick spoke of his interaction with Paul, Bert and Charlie during Jim’s days as a courthouse reporter (click here).

After Charlie died, intrepid photographer Adam Sachs sent me one of his favorite shots (with another former mayor, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver).

I’ll miss Charlie Wheeler running for office, including his long-shot candidacies. Below, when considering running in 2020.

RIP Mr. Mayor

Lonnie’s Jukebox – Philadelphia Sound: To further support the cause of the Phillies in the World Series, Lonnie’s Jukebox will play the Philadelphia Sound, also known as Philadelphia Soul, Philly Soul, PhillySound and TSOP (the sound of Philadelphia).

The Philadelphia Sound is soul music backed by an instrumental texture developed by Philadelphia music producers. Similar to what Motown had done in Detroit and Stax in Memphis. The biggest hits were in the 1970s, and the genre laid the groundwork for disco.

So let’s listen to what they were creating fifty years ago in the City of Brotherly Love.

“TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia)” by MFSB (mother father sister brother) with Three Degrees. Theme for the TV show Soul Train. First TV theme song to reach #1 on the Billboard Top 100.

“Only The Strong Survive” by Jerry Butler. Will it be the Phillies or the Astros?

“Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” by the Delfonics (live on Soul Train). The Phillies when they win the Series.

“Betcha By Golly, Wow” by the Stylistics. Wild Card, Wow! NLDS, Wow! NLCS, Wow! World Series?

“Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead. Theme song for the 2022 Phillies?

“Love Train” by the O’Jays (live on Soul Train). This is what downtown Philadelphia will be dancing to when the Phillies win it all.

Go Phillies! Go Current!