So the Phillies are going to the World Series for the second year in a row. Congratulations to them. They've played very, very well in the last month-and-a-half and are more than deserving of their chance to defend their title. They breezed through the NLCS against the Dodgers and will now await their World Series opponent. To the Phillies fans I know, I hope things go well for you in the Fall Classic (especially since you'll likely be facing the Yankees). It must be nice to root for a winner, eh?

But the Philly victory also means that the Dodgers lost and will be heading home after the NLCS for the second year in a row. I know many Dodgers fans, so it's a bummer for me. I was hoping they could make it back to the Series for the first time since '88. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

It also means that the marquis rematch of Yankees-Dodgers that everyone (i.e., Major League Baseball and the Fox television network) was hoping for just isn't going to be. It's a shame because it would've been fun to see - for the first five minutes at least, until Fox killed the story by jamming it down our throats too hard.

In honor of that would-be World Series, I'd like to point out this article from the October 20, 1952, issue of Life magazine (newly available on Google Books). The Series was thrilling and kept people glued to their seats for all seven games. The picture above comes from October 7, 1952, during Game 7. Patrons at a Chicago bar cannot take their eyes away from the action unfolding on the screen.

From the article:

(click "Read More" to continue reading)

"For seven days the midday life of some 70 million Americans was disrupted. People went to lunch and didn't come back for hours. Work slowed down, classrooms were disrupted and - especially on the last day - almost nobody, from beer-sipping low-brows to erudite high-brows, watched anything but the Yankees-Dodgers acting out on TV one of the most dramatic World Series since the Dean brothers whoomped Detroit 18 years ago. ... As people sat breathless, a waitress in Denver eyed TV deadheads at her counter and said, 'We can't get them off the stools. They just ask for another cup of coffee and go on watching.'"

It makes you miss the daytime postseason games, doesn't it? I'd love to see the country slow to a crawl every afternoon to watch the two best teams in baseball slug it out. It must've been quite the experience.

Anyhow, click through for some more great shots from the 1952 World Series, including a group of MIT professors taking the afternoon off to watch the Series from the lounge and a few pretty spiffy action shots from the games themselves. The article/photos go on for a few pages. Just scroll down until you see a shirtless Mickey Mantle enjoying the championship.

I'm going to miss the rematch we were all hoping for, but, if we get the two best teams in the majors playing each other - and I think that's what we're headed for - I can't complain too much. In the meantime, we can always look back at articles like these to see what we might have missed.

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written by Bill@TDS, October 22, 2009

I was rooting for the Dodgers in the LCS, but I'm happy not to be seeing the Dodgers-Yankees series, for the simple reason that if that happened, the only Dodgers Fox would show us for the entire series would be Torre, Mattingly and Manny, and generally only in connection with something about the Yankees or Red Sox. At least with the Phillies they've got to talk about Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, and thus the game that's actually happening that day, every now and then.

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