There’s a bit of trivia about this World Series that I can’t stop thinking about. Here we are in 2026, trying to make sense of what baseball has become … because it most definitely has become something different.
That’s a wonderful thing about this game. It stays the same and constantly changes all at the same time.
Baseball in the 1970s and into the 1980s was about speed and defense and line drives up the middle and artificial turf and pitchers who went nine.
Baseball in the 1990s and well into the 2000s was about brute force, home runs hit into the Bay, doubles crashing off the wall, and pitchers who turned their necks so quickly they’d get whiplash.
And then, over the last decade-plus, baseball has been about strikeouts, lots of strikeouts, mind-bending sweepers, blurring fastballs, swings-and-misses galore, and batters trying desperately to combat those exploding pitches by swinging with an uppercut and hoping to reach the seats.
But in these playoffs — and already in this World Series — we are seeing another game.
And I think about these two facts.
Tampa Bay’s Chandler Simpson is hitting third in the World Series.
Tampa Bay’s Chandler Simpson has never hit a big-league home run.
This combination — a player with zero career home runs hitting third in the World Series — has happened before. Sure. You only have to go back to Chick Shorten … in 1916. Chick Shorten was a 24-year-old rookie for the Boston Red Sox that year, a part-time player — he was asked to help fill the hole left when Boston traded Tris Speaker to Cleveland for a couple of players and, mostly, money. He poked .295 in 53 games. Of his 33 hits, only three were for extra bases.
Shorten didn’t even play in Game 1 of the Series against the Brooklyn Robins. The Red Sox had Tillie Walker in the No. 3 spot then — Walker was a rugged power hitter* with a strong arm.
*Walker later tied Babe Ruth for the league lead in home runs in 1918 … with 11.
But in Game 3, with the Robins starting righty pitcher Jack Coombs, Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan slotted the lefty-hitting Shorten into that number-three slot. And what do you know? Shorten knocked three hits, and while they were all singles, the papers reported that “a little more pep to one of the blows and it would have gone into the crowd for a home run.” As Mel Allen used to say: “How about that?”
And so Carrigan put Shorten back in the No. 3 spot for Game 5. He hit another single, drove in a run, and Boston won the World Series.
That’s the last time a player with zero career home runs hit in third in the lineup.
Until Friday — and Chandler Simpson.
Obviously, the two situations are not comparable. Chick Shorten was a part-time player during Deadball, when no one hit home runs. Chandler Simpson is a full-time player in the Launch Angle Era, when everyone does. Simpson has played in 260 games and has more than 1,000 big-league plate appearances without a homer.
The last guy to start his career that way? Ben Revere between 2010 to 2013. Before that, yes, you have to go back to Duane Kuiper.
So, yes, Chandler Simpson is an anomaly, a rare bird in today’s game. He counts on his great speed and his talent for putting the ball in play. He chops and bunts and slaps at the ball, and then he runs like hell. His Baseball Savant percentile rankings chart is like a Jasper Johns painting.
He is dead last in baseball in exit velocity, hard-hit percentage and bat speed. He’s the best in baseball at making contact. Those things don’t seem to go well together. But somehow they do. Simpson hit .300, led the league in stolen bases, and is the pumping energy of the Tampa Bay Rays.
And in Game 1 of the World Series, he hit third.
No, baseball is not the same game it was last year … or the year before that … or the year before that.
Game 1 was unlike any World Series game we have seen this century.