That's another thing I don't understand, and it's the same with other sports, such as ( European ) Football -- Why do we even have national teams any more, when the majority of athletes in those teams are from all over the world? Like, how is it a German team, if it has maybe 3 athletes from Germany? And then people freak out when the German team wins the European or World Championship, and I'm like "Nope, "Germany" didn't win the championship, athletes from Turkey, Africa, Italy and half a dozen other nations won the championship... after being contracted for a few million Euro each." Like... what's the point? It's no longer about fair competition, It's all about money and sponsoring deals and advertisement. That's one of the main reasons why I have close to zero interest in sports, at least on a global or national level. Too much money involved, too much bullshit.

I can understand when people worship specific athletes, for their achievements, but I find it hard to support teams. They have no real local identity or anything to identify with -- the "best" team is pretty much the one with the biggest budget, so they can buy all the best athletes for ridiculous amounts of money.

Just realized, it's essentially Pay-to-Win on a grand scale. Hah hah.

Technically the teams are corporate entities, within a league structure that may be non-profit or for-profit.

MLB is a U.S. league only in the same vein that Amazon identifies as an American company. The German national team, for example, is the only actual "German team" and players must have some claim to citizenship.

FC Bayern, OTOH, is a privately held entity with a privately held league, as much as these teams/leagues rely on civic pride to bring out the fans.


p.s. The Little League World Series is, arguably, more of a world competition. It is juiced a bit in that the U.S. teams all play in one bracket, so they're guaranteed to have exactly one spot in the finals every year. The overall finals record looks to be something in the ballpark of U.S. 34 - World 37, so within spitting distance of coin flip results, anyway.

Milwaukee Brewers

The Los Angeles Angels

Technically they are the

"Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim"

No. I'm not making that up. :P

Sure about that?

Hmmm, unless they changed it this year, which is totally possible.

Bummer, wish I was awake 17 hours ago and online too. Rooting for the Indians and would love to have had a 2nd reason to be behind them. Barring injury like last year to 2 of their 3 best pitchers, they're on a mission and getting it done this year. Go Tribe!

Boston Red Sox

He looks around, around
He sees angles in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

I have no idea what I'm doing so I will just go with:

Chicago Cubs

Nope. Still their name (see screenshot from their website taken today.)

There's actually a reason for this. IIRC (could be remembering wrong) the city of Anaheim funded several hundred million dollars of upgrades to Angels Stadium back years ago, and part of the "deal" to get them to fund it was that the Angels would have Anaheim in their name (they used to be called the California Angels). So, after that they became the Anaheim Angels for several years, but then wanted to focus on the the Los Angeles aspect so they changed their name again, but in order to meet the agreement with the city of Anaheim they had to have the name Anaheim in their name so they called themselves the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim."

I have 0.0 clue about baseball (except that movie with Charlie Sheen), but I always like rooting for the underdog, so I hope your wish comes true and the Nationals win.

Thank you for the great giveaway OldFatGuy!

My pick is the Cleveland Indians

Booooooooooo.......

:)