I once wrote a post about the biggest stories in baseball that haven’t happened yet. You can consider this something of a special edition of that. It is…. the biggest baseball stories that haven’t happened yet… and when they will happen:
Vin Scully Retirement
As sad as it is, the end is near for the Vin Scully era of baseball, AKA the era of baseball in which everybody born since 1950 have spent our entire lives in. We are lucky enough to get him for at least one more year, but it sure sounds like 2016 will be his last hurrah. It’s not like he hasn’t been preparing us for this. He’s 87. Over the years he’s cut down on games. Other announcers for the Dodgers, most notably ESPN alum Charley Steiner, have become more common. Nowadays he only does home games, certain other games on the West Coast, and occasionally special occasions like the playoffs and last year’s season opener in Australia.
That doesn’t make his upcoming retirement any easier to take, though. For decades, long before many of us were born, Vin Scully has been the voice of baseball. It seems nearly incomprehensible that it will still be played without him. And yet it will.
LIKELIHOOD OF HAPPENING IN NEXT FIVE YEARS: 99.99%
MOST LIKELY TIME IT WILL HAPPEN: 2016
Cubs Win World Series
In the future, the Cubs’ lack of World Series titles will be an oddity. Not because of the fact it had happened, but because there was so much of a fuss about it. You see, with there now being 30 teams in the league, even in the most parity-filled circumstances, where a different team would win every year before anybody else could win a second one in the span of time, it would take 30 years for every team to win. And that…. doesn’t happen. Some teams will do well over long spans of time, winning multiple times (see: Yankees, Cardinals, the Giants). Other teams will be good but lose their window. So long as the league is big, the chances of long world title droughts increases. That is not to say that teams won’t be able to win glory and create good memories for their teams (the Royals didn’t win last season, but I doubt that anybody in KC would call last year anything but a fun ride), but we will be seeing long title droughts become more common.
That said, back to the topic at hand: the Cubs. Going by paper, it is clear they will win the World Series, and soon. Maybe not this year (although it’s possible) but probably some time in the not-too-distant future. They are too talented and have too good of a young core not to. Except, of course, this is baseball and often the best teams don’t win- the 1954 Indians didn’t win, the 2001 Mariners didn’t win, the 1969 Orioles didn’t win, the 1995 Indians didn’t win, the 1906 Cubs didn’t win, the great pitching staffs of the 90s Atlanta Braves only won once, and the 1994 Expos didn’t even get to play. So many variables at play.
That said… I think they will win. Probably. Maybe.
LIKELIHOOD OF IT HAPPENING IN NEXT FIVE YEARS: 65%
MOST LIKELY TIME IT WILL HAPPEN: 2017
A Major League Baseball Player Comes Out as Homosexual
Earlier this year, David Denson of the Brewers organization came out as gay. And good for him on that. However, the fact remains that there has yet to be an openly gay player in MLB. Well, sort of. Glenn Burke was out during his career to his teammates and to the front office, but he was not out to the public at large. With increasing tolerance about LGBT issues, Denson’s coming-out, a gay player in the NBA who played without incident and little fanfare after his initial announcement (Jason Collins) and a gay player drafted into the NFL (Michael Sam), it seems like it’s only a matter of time before a MLB player comes out. Maybe it’ll be a star, maybe it’ll be a young prospect, or maybe it’ll be a veteran utility-man, the baseball equivalent of Jason Collins.
But I do think it will happen. It just seems like a matter of time. And it feels like it’s going to happen pretty soon.
LIKELIHOOD OF IT HAPPENING IN NEXT FIVE YEARS: 90%
MOST LIKELY TIME IT WILL HAPPEN: Spring Training 2016
A Major League Player From Mainland China
In my original look at the biggest stories that haven’t happened yet, I wrote this:
“It’s possible that the most important NBA player since Michael Jordan is not Lebron James, Kobe Bryant or Kevin Durant, but rather Yao Ming, who opened the world’s most populous nation (and thus most lucrative potential market) to the league. While Yao had his career derailed by injury, and follow-up Chinese players like Yi Jianlian have flopped, the NBA remains perhaps the most popular sports league in the Middle Kingdom, light-years ahead of the NFL and MLB.
While certainly MLB is putting plenty of efforts into trying to cultivate Chinese baseball, it’s unlikely that they will get even a fraction of the NBA’s Chinese influence until a player actually born in China makes the major leagues. Given that there are no Chinese-born players in the minors right now, and that the Chinese baseball program is basically kept around simply due to American funding and some Chinese government funds, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. But when and if it does, it’ll be a huge story on both sides of the Pacific.”
Most of that is still true. However, one thing is no longer true: there will likely soon be a minor leaguer from mainland China: Xu Guiyuan, nicknamed “Itchy”, signed by the Baltimore Orioles this year and expected to play in the Orioles system beginning next season. His odds of making it to the big leagues are, of course, long, something that a China-based western columnist pointed out.
Still, it seems likely that eventually a Chinese player will make MLB. It just might be awhile.
LIKELIHOOD OF IT HAPPENING IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS: 5% (about 10% of minor leaguers make the Majors, but who the hell knows if Guiyuan would be able to get up to the majors in five years even if he does prove to be a MLB player!)
MOST LIKELY TIME IT WILL HAPPEN: 2025 (I picked that year semi-randomly)
A Female Major Leaguer (or even affiliated minor leaguer)
Again from my previous post:
“There have been a few women who have played professional baseball. Ila Borders, for example, played in the independent leagues in the 1990s. Jackie Mitchell famously struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in Chattanooga (although some believe it was a deliberate publicity stunt). At least three women played in the Negro Leagues.
It’s highly unlikely that there will be a woman playing in MLB or even the affiliated minors anytime soon- after all, it’s something that would be seen coming from miles away as the woman played well in High School and/or College- but it could happen, and when/if it does, it’ll probably be because of the knuckleball: Eri Yoshida of Japan has played in independent leagues in both Japan and America using a knuckler, for example, and Chelsea Baker– who had been taught the knuckleball by the late Joe Niekro (seriously), has apparently been approached to play in a women’s baseball league in Japan.
So, who knows? Perhaps one day there may be a woman playing in Major League Baseball.”
This is still one of the least likely things to happen, despite those who have shown promise. But they’ve since been joined by another: Melissa Mayeux. She’s a French girl who was good enough to attend an MLB-run training camp in Europe and is the first woman to be deemed eligible for being a international signing. That doesn’t mean she’ll be signed, of course, but it’s a good indicator that she’s probably good enough to be at least be semi-considered.
So it’s still unlikely, but it could happen.
LIKELIHOOD OF HAPPENING IN NEXT FIVE YEARS: 1% (because you never know)
MOST LIKELY TIME IT WILL HAPPEN: ???? (I have no clue)
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