The Houston Astros took a 2-1 series lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night.
At this point, however, I can no longer push the “our long-time favorite team” angle with regards to the Astros. People watch sports for various reasons. People root for teams that aren’t their own based on various reasons. And people are turned off from teams for various reasons.
And Yuli Gurriel made it very difficult for a lot of fans to want to root for him or his team on Friday night.
After hitting a homerun off of Yu Darvish, who struggled mightily in the second inning of Game 3, Gurriel had a very racist response in the dugout.
Gurriel then had a weak apology that equated to “I’m not racist, I have a black friend!” in the form of an “apology if anyone was upset, that wasn’t my intention, I played in Japan” response. It was poorly handled all around.
The commissioner will evaluate whether or not to punish Gurriel, but the odds of it going into effect during the series are slim to none.
**Update from the future (since I wrote most of this at 3:00 am): He will be suspended for five games but not until next season, which is effectively meaningless. It basically sent the message that the World Series was too important to the game to have players be suspended, even for racism. (Except in the cases of PED use, of course).
So, if you want to root for the Dodgers, I won’t blame you. If you’ve lost interest entirely, can’t blame you for that either. We all root for different things in sports. And that is okay.
Tonight features Alex Wood facing off against Charlie Morton as the Dodgers try to re-tie the series. Lineups are exactly the same as yesterday, otherwise.
Game 4 kicks off at 5:00.....or 5:20 pm, depending on where you look, and will, of course, be aired on Fox.
Los Angeles Dodgers
- Chris Taylor, CF
- Corey Seager SS
- Justin Turner 3B
- Cody Bellinger 1B
- Yasiel Puig RF
- Logan Forsythe 2B
- Austin Barnes C
- Joc Pederson DH
- Kiké Hernandez, LF
Alex Wood, P
Houston Astros
- George Springer, CF
- Alex Bregman, 3B
- Jose Altuve, 2B
- Carlos Correa, SS
- Yuli Gurriel, 1B
- Josh Reddick, RF
- Evan Gattis, DH
- Marwin Gonzalez, LF
- Brian McCann, C
Charlie Morton, P