With all due respect to Comrade McQuade, you do not have to root for the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series. First of all, that's his job, not yours, so he shouldn't be skiving off his responsibilities. You've got your own crap to do: trying to backhoe the fresh graves of Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.
Secondly, you also don't have to root for the Houston Astros if you don't want to do so. We've already discussed this, but you are in charge of your own grudges. As long as they don't include Dusty Baker, you can hate them going back to when they were the Colt .45s and their logo was a smoking revolver.
But the following things are indisputably true. You don't have to look at or listen to the New York Yankees anymore because of the Astros. You can't legitimately speculate that they are still cheating bastards because you saw so many of them, including Jose Altuve, taking off their jerseys to wear those lame AL Champions t-shirts. You don't do that if you're still wired to a trashcan browser. You even saw them willingly wear those ghastly roadside convenience-store-level snapback hats to celebrate their championship, so they can't be accused of excessive vanity. And while their own fans are detestably annoying as hell (because all fans of all teams are detestably annoying as hell in all situations and circumstances), they are marginally less likely than Comrade McQuade's charmingly misanthropic pals to punch you in the throat to viralize a Youtube video.
Mostly, though, you cannot root for the Phillies because if you do so, you are giving in to Comrade McQuade's passive-aggressive bullying. When he says as he did in his blog, "Come on,"—in italics, no less—he is subtly trying to force you into taking his position even if it isn't yours. Frankly, the greater likelihood is that you don't care about the Phillies any more than you did in late September when they looked like they were going to miss the playoffs on their own ghastly merit, and if you don't care about the Astros either, well, that's at least the honest position. This is a World Series that does not grip the soul unless you just happen to like baseball, and since any postseason series that does not go the maximum number of games is an affront to the dignity of all mankind, your real and only responsibility is to root for the team that's behind, either during or between games.
So root for the Phillies if you must. Just don't buy Comrade McQuade's snivelings as the reason to do so. In fact, I can think of one way how you can independently and happily root for the Phillies without feeling like you've been coerced into doing so: if Dusty Baker is named the Phillies manager before Game 1. This man must have a ring just on the basis of being the coolest old man in the sport, period.
Besides, Comrade McQuade has the Eagles, and they only play three more teams with winning records between now and the end of the season, and may very well end being the best team in the entire NFC, so you know he'd drop the Phillies like an anthrax hoodie the first chance he got, like any other Philadelphia sports fan. And like any Houston fan if they weren't stuck with the Rockets and Texans.
