Culture
The Hater’s Guide to the 2024 World Series
This isn’t clickbait. This is engagement bait. This is subscription bait. This is “sign up for auto-renew, then get you hooked on Wordle and NYT Cooking” bait. But it’s also a deeper truth that resonates with a lot of baseball fans, and it goes something like this:
New York Yankees vs. Los Angeles Dodgers is the most annoying World Series matchup possible. It might be the most annoying World Series matchup ever, which seems hyperbolic until you start looking at previous matchups and realizing most of them didn’t have the full force of social media or the Pundit Industrial Complex behind them. Yes, I realize that articles like this are a part of the problem, but unavoidability is the only possible outcome.
Please note that this isn’t the same as the worst World Series matchup possible. For heaven’s sake, not by a long shot. The worst World Series matchup would be the Chicago White Sox vs. the Colorado Rockies, with the latter team being heavy favorites. In the actual 2024 World Series, there will be several future Hall of Famers playing, most of them in their absolute prime, doing unreal things to and with baseballs. It’s a very good World Series if you like to watch excellent players and displays of baseball ability. I’m actually excited to watch the baseball part of it, and you should be too.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be annoying, though. Let us count the ways. Haters, gather around. We have some hating to do.
Been there, done that
This World Series is a Simpsons episode from Season 43 where Homer gets a new job. It’s technically a fresh episode, but it’s a worn-out trope.
Oh, wow, the only cities that matter in the only country that matters, going head to head. Look at all the celebrities in the stands, everybody. Have you ever noticed how different these two cities and lifestyles are? New Yorkers are all “hey, I’m walkin’ here” and Los Angeles is like “Is that Bobby DeNiro? Hold my tiny dog, I’m going to say hi,” ha ha, it’s funny because it’s true. Put a brick wall behind me, toss me a microphone and throw a spotlight on. This material is too good to waste.
It may be a new Yankee Stadium but we won’t be able to escape the waxing over ghosts of baseball past in this Series. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
Even if you can block out the noise that comes with two cultural centers having even more attention paid to them, there’s the part where the baseball stuff has been done before. When my mom was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, she thought the World Series was only what you called it when the Yankees and Dodgers played each other, just like The Iron Bowl is what they call the Alabama/Auburn football games. She doesn’t recall this as something that makes her laugh; she shakes her head ruefully. That’s how often the Yankees and Dodgers used to play in the World Series.
This matchup happened in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956, and that was enough for seven generations. Then it happened again twice in the 1970s and once in the 1980s. Yankees vs. Dodgers is a throwback to those bleak, binary times, when it felt like nobody else had a chance. Mostly because they didn’t.
This is the matchup that Fox has wanted for decades
Every October, I warm my heart by thinking about Fox executives who lie awake at night, worrying about a Cleveland Guardians and Milwaukee Brewers World Series. These chuzzlewits and pecksniffs aren’t thinking about the excitement a pennant would bring to the areas that haven’t enjoyed enough of them (or any of them at all). They’re not thinking about specific matchups and baseball-related quirks. They’re thinking about eyeballs and star power.
And there’s something to that. There will be more eyeballs for this specific matchup because there will be more people tuning in, and they’re tuning in because they feel there’s a likelier chance that they’ll be entertained by this World Series. Craig Calcaterra smartly compared the combination of high ratings and noise complaints to Yogi Berra’s famous quip, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
Except I always knew what Berra meant by that. The people he cared about didn’t want to deal with it. The Mick and Billy Martin didn’t need to be seen. They didn’t need the attention that came with an ultra-hip nightclub. They were purists. And I realize that I’m using famous Yankees to represent the cool people in this analogy, which means it’ll be tricky to resolve. But that’s what paragraph breaks are for.
More than any of this, though, it’s the idea that television executives will be happy. This is how they make their money:
They make money from eroding your sanity. Their homes are built, brick by brick, from the ashes of your grey matter. They wanted Yankees vs. Dodgers because it would mean they could tell more people that they can have the kind of wi-fi that lets them take ventriloquism classes in their attic, where there was previously a dead spot. This is the World Series that ropes in the casuals, the barely interested, the people who will be surprised that there’s a pitch clock now. They’ll tap out after an inning once they remember that baseball isn’t for them, but not before they understand that they can finally do ballet in their man caves.
Sometimes I’ll be falling asleep and think about “His father is the district attorney” out of nowhere. That’s a piece of my brain cracking off and floating away, like a calving ice shelf, never to be the same again. Someone has to pay. Preferably, these someones would pay by getting every Guardians vs. Brewers World Series possible.
I do not care for the Yankees and Dodgers. They insist upon themselves
Both of these franchises stare at themselves in the mirror when no one’s looking. They also do it when everyone’s looking. Monuments and plaques, a deserved sense of history that still manages to be overblown at the same time. No mascots. Jerseys that have barely changed in a century.
They insist upon themselves. They think they’re better than you and your team. And, sure, by getting to the World Series, that’s technically true, but they don’t have to insist upon themselves so danged hard all the time. It’s much funnier when entitled, history-drunk teams keep getting so close and losing year after year.
Except for the 49ers. That’s enough of that. There’s probably a statute of limitations with that one. It’s simply not funny anymore.
Everyone is going to bring up the payrolls for both teams, but they’re going to miss the larger point
Yes, the Yankees and Dodgers have more resources than every other team. They spend more money. They’re spoiled and so are their fans. They have advantages that other teams don’t have with more visibility, cultural cachet, history and purchasing power. People will talk about how much the Dodgers committed to players this offseason (technically over a billion dollars if you don’t adjust for inflation and deferred salaries), and people will talk about how much Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole will make. It’s unavoidable.
But that’s letting the other owners off the hook. Mookie Betts is on the Dodgers because Fenway Sports Group Holdings LLC worried about how his salary would affect their abilities to add players to Liverpool and drivers to RFK Racing. They made a business decision, and they absolutely deserve to feel bad about it. The Pittsburgh Pirates let Barry Bonds go because they lacked vision. The Chicago Cubs let Greg Maddux go because they didn’t realize how eager the North Side was to make the team a part of the regional identity. The Washington Nationals didn’t commit to Bryce Harper or Juan Soto because they figured they’d find another teenage outfielder with Hall of Fame talent at the Teenage Outfielder with Hall of Fame Talent store.
All of these owners are weenies. They’re occasionally pragmatic and occasionally silly, but they’re mostly just weenies. They should spend money on good players and keep them away from the Yankees and Dodgers! Especially the players they draft and develop.
More people should be saying, “The San Diego Padres had the right idea” instead of “We need to stop the Yankees and Dodgers from doing this,” and the inability to get to that epiphany will make the discourse even more tiresome.
Also, the Padres should have kept Juan Soto, too. They’re not off the hook, here. Michael King is cool, but c’mon. Look at what you’ve done.
A good World Series? Perhaps. A great World Series is possible. Heck, give us some Game 7 hijinks, and this could go down as one of the classics. Shohei Ohtani, returning to the mound in the 19th inning of Game 7, in front of a stunned Dodger Stadium crowd, because there simply aren’t any other pitchers available, and he’s willing to make the sacrifice. All he has to do is get through Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.
We can dream.
But even though it has the potential to be the best World Series, it’s guaranteed to be the most annoying World Series possible. The wrong people have wanted it for years. The team that wins will throw the trophy in an arrogance juicer and get a fresh glass, even though they weren’t really running low. The losing team will feel even more entitled at this time next year. And at every moment, before every inning, with every joke and comment on the pre- and post-game show, you will be told just how special this all is.
Guardians in six. They have the bullpen, even if the Brewers’ lineup is underrated. What a beautiful, simple and boring dream that would have been.
(Top photo illustration by Sean Reilly / The Athletic: Orlando Ramirez / Getty Images; Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos via Getty Images; Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images; Carmen Mandato / Getty Images; New York Yankees / Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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