The Baseball Gods have spoken. There will be a Game Seven. As a friend of mine texted me, “It is too good a series not to go to the 7th game.” However, I now understand what current Fox Sports analyst John Schmoltz meant when being told that he had yet again played in another classic playoff game, back when the Astros beat the Atlanta Braves in 2005 in 18 in the National League Division Series, “I am sick of playing in classic games, I want to win one.”
The Dodgers overcame Astro ace Justin Verlander to win Game Six, 3-1. Verlander gave up two runs in the 6th inning and that was all the Dodgers needed. The maligned Dodger bullpen came through with 5.5 masterful innings of relief pitching. The Astros had their chances, leaving six runners in scoring position. Their only run came on yet another ‘Springer Dinger’ home run by leadoff hitter George Springer.
We are now on to Game Seven later today. Amazingly enough, this will be the first Game Seven played in storied Dodger Stadium. From the end of the Boys of Summer; through Sandy Koufax and the hitless wonders of the 1960s to Tommy Lasorda’s multiple National League and World Series winners in the 70s and 80s, the now third oldest ballpark in American has never hosted a Game Seven.
What are the omens for tonight? Will it be a pitcher’s Game 7 as Sandy Koufax, pitching a three-hit shutout in 1965 on two days rest. Similarly, Bob Gibson won Game Seven’s in both the 1964 and 1967 World Series (although he did lose Game Seven in 1968). Or will some hitter equal Bill Mazeroski, who hit the only walk-off 9th inning home run in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, to win a multi-shot slugfest, as the Pirates beat the Yankees 9-8.
Erudite as always, Tom Verducci, writing in Sports Illustrated.com, said, “So now we have arrived at the point we should have expected in the first place, when two 100-plus win teams get together in the World Series for the first time in the 42 years of the free agent era. It’s just that how we got here has been as circuitous, and yes, sometimes as clumsy, as one of those minor league bat races—you know, where some guy with plumber’s cleavage spins three times around a bat and then tries to run to first base with his internal gyroscope all fouled up.
In six games, we have seen 60 pitchers, 13 tied scores and 10 blown leads. In 57 innings of play, 56 of them have ended with the Dodgers and Astros separated by no more than three runs. Four Cy Young Award winners or runners-up—Kershaw, Verlander, Darvish and Dallas Keuchel—have combined for seven of the 12 starts in the World Series, and yet those celebrity starters are 1–3 with a 5.55 ERA.”
Near the end of his piece he wrote, “That’s why Game 7s are the best drama sport can ever offer. All the usual rules of engagement no longer apply. After the Dodgers have played 176 games and the Astros have played 179 games, an entire season seven months in the making is distilled into one winner-take-all game. Game 7 mints infamy and legend with random approbation. The bounce of a ball, the slip of a pitch, the switch of a pitcher … every detail of the game is played on a razor’s edge of posterity.”
From the compliance perspective, I like the angle from another article in Sports Illustrated.com by Ben Reiter. He predicts an Astros win because of the character of the players, noting “what GM Jeff Luhnow’s many critics don’t understand about the rebuilding plan he initiated back in 2012 is that this was by design. They accuse him of assembling his team by computer program, one which hunted for high on-base percentages and launch angles and spin rates, and while those things were important, he always factored in a characteristic that only experienced scouts could identify. He wanted players who were never afraid. And that is what he got.” In other words, not a team of characters but a team of character, ready to play on the biggest stage in the firmament of the baseball world.
As a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), this translates into passion to do the job of compliance, literally when the game is on the line. If you do not believe in the compliance regime that you are pushing, it will be nearly impossible for the rest of your far-flung corporate work force to believe in it. Talk about compliance and the positive aspects of your program for your company. If you sit in your office, situated as Dr. No in the Land of NO, you and your program will get NOwhere fast.
As a CCO or compliance practitioner, you will never have enough time to answer every question, nor should you. If you can provide your employee base the tools to make the right call, I think you will find most of the time they will. In a compliance leadership role, you should have two overriding goals: (1) burn compliance into the DNA of your company deeply enough that the business folks will come up with the right response almost all the time, and (2) be there when they cannot do so. Your tool kit should include an immediate yet well-reasoned response to the question of why compliance is important and why we need to do it as a company.
For those sports fans out there who are not from Houston or Los Angeles, this is sports at its finest. One game for all the marbles. For those of us in Houston and Los Angeles, our collective blood pressure could take a bit less drama and tension but there you have it. I have made it through every out of every inning in each game (as has Adam Turteltaub, from the Dodger side of the fence). As Pete Rose said when Game Six of the 1975 World Series went into extra innings to Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, too bad we can’t declare it a tie and everyone go home.
As to what I believe, I will end with a quote from Reiter’s final paragraph, “The Astros won’t win because of anything karmic…but they will win because they were built to win games like this, and because they’re set up to take advantage of an equipment malfunction [those slick baseballs] that the league perhaps unintentionally introduced, and because, if only slightly, they are the better team.”
GO ASTROS!
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