The Popcorn Stand: Yankee Doodle Dandy scenarios

The Popcorn Stand today focuses on the Major League Baseball pennant race, so those of you who don’t care about the greatest game there is can skip today’s offering.

Actually the last pennant race in Major League Baseball happened in 1968 before the MLB playoffs were expanded. And actually the last true pennant race happened in 1967 when Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski singled-handedly won the American League pennant for the Boston Red Sox on the final day of the season.

But for this season’s playoff race, my focus turns to the Evil Empire, the New York Yankees. Of course it’s no fun to root against teams like the Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers when they’re not any good.

The ultimate feeling of schadenfreude happens when those teams are eliminated.

My ultimate wish is for the Yankees to be eliminated from the playoffs on the final day of the season, down by a run in the ninth inning with Giancarlo Stanton striking out for the final out with the bases loaded.

That dream seems to be fading as the Oakland A’s are now 7 games back of the Yankees in the Wild Card race as of this writing, but there’s always hope.

Although if the Yankees finish with the second best record in baseball only to lose to the Seattle Mariners or A’s in the Wild Card Game — with Giancarlo Stanton striking out with the bases loaded in the ninth for the final out with the Yankees down by a run of course — that would be an awful nice realization of schadenfreude.

Then I could listen to Yankee fans and ESPN-types whine about how the playoff system needs to be changed.

Of course if the Milwaukee Brewers or heaven forbid the San Francisco Giants, my team, lose in the Wild Card game, that would be a travesty and the playoff system would definitely need to be changed.

No matter what happens I just hope somebody triumphs over evil — the Evil Empire.