Ancient History and Short-Term Memories in World Series Game 1

Last night’s broadcast of Game 1 of the World Series, on Fox, opened with a video featuring eighty-, ninety-, and hundred-year-old fans of the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians talking about the years they’ve spent watching their favorite team lose. “I’m damn sick and tired of waiting,” a particularly charming hundred-and-four-year-old woman in an Indians T-shirt said. As is well known by this point, the Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908, when the Yankees were still known as the Highlanders and the Dodgers were the Superbas, and they had not even participated in one since 1945, two years before Jackie Robinson integrated baseball. The Indians, meanwhile, have not won a title since 1948, when the ageless Negro League folk hero Satchel Paige was on the roster, and they hadn’t reached the Series since the mid-nineties, when they suffered two heartbreaking defeats, in 1995 and 1997. It seemed, then, that this intro would set a schmaltzy tone for the undoubtedly historic series to come. But mostly, despite occasional references by the announcer Joe Buck to both teams’ championship droughts, the broadcast showed restraint in not dwelling on the past more than it did.