Baseball World Heavyweight Championship Update for 6/16/15

(Sorry. It's been a while. Stuff happens.)

When we last saw the Baseball World Heavyweight Title (which, for those of you just joining us, imagines the World Series Championship as a wrestling belt defended throughout the regular season), it was in the hands of of the big stinky Giants. However, their second reign of 2015 was cut short by a band of Pirates from the mean streets of Pittsburgh, PA. The Pirates defeated the Giants in an epic sweep June 1-3, to capture the coveted strap.

Before I could even put their logo plates on the belt*, though, the Pirates were upended by their NL Central rivals, the Brewers, on June 9. The Brewers, using one of their most famous assets, showered the Bucs with an epic beer bath and stole the title.


The Brewers survived a challenge from first-time contenders the Nationals, but have already dropped the first fall to the Kansas City Royals. If the champs lose today or tomorrow, the belt will head to the American League for the first time this season. (This will also make things difficult for the Dodgers, as they seek to regain the title.)

Here is the title history to date:

Current Champion: Milwaukee Brewers 2015 BASEBALL WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE HISTORY
CHAMPION	WON FROM	REIGN LENGTH	SUCCESSFUL DEFENSES
1) San Francisco Giants	San Diego Padres (9/28/14)	6 days	1 (vs. AZ)
2) San Diego Padres	San Francisco Giants (4/12/15)	13 days	2 (vs. CHC, COL)
3) Los Angeles Dodgers	San Diego Padres (4/25/15)	25 days	6 (vs. SFG, AZ, MIL, COL, MIA, COL)
4) San Francisco Giants	Los Angeles Dodgers (5/20/15)	13 days	3 (vs. COL, MIL, ATL)
5) Pittsburgh Pirates	San Francisco Giants (6/2/15)	7 days	1 (vs. ATL)
6) Milwaukee Brewers	Pittsburgh Pirates (6/9/15)	8 days	1 (vs. WAS)

Speaking of the Dodgers...


The last update also introduced you to the SoSG World Championship, a title that I can fully impose my Dodgers bias on. After two successful title defenses, against the Padres and the Braves, the Dodgers shockingly lost the SoSG World Championship to the hated St. Louis Cardinals...

...or so they thought. In light of this morning's news of the FBI investigating the Cardinals for hacking the Astros' player information database, the championship committee has stripped the Cardinals of the SoSG Championship and returned it to the Dodgers. The two series that the Cardinals won have been stricken from the record, and the team has been banned from all shots at BOTH CHAMPIONSHIP BELTS for the rest of 2015. (This is also bad news for the Rockies and Marlins, who would technically have been SoSG title holders, had this grave injustice not occurred.) Sorry, Cardinals, but that's...best for business.

The title history below reflects the Cardinals' ban:

Current Champion: Los Angeles Dodgers 2015 SoSG WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY
CHAMPION	WON FROM	REIGN LENGTH	SUCCESSFUL DEFENSES
1) Los Angeles Dodgers	Awarded by SoSG (5/22/15)	26 days	5 (vs. SD, ATL, COL, AZ, SD)

The Dodgers aren't out of the woods yet, despite having their belt returned to them today. They are already down one fall in a four-game series with the Texas Rangers. They will need to win two games to retain the belt...

...unless I don't feel like handing it over.

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*UPDATE (3:56pm): It turns out I did indeed update the belt for the Pirates, and then forgot all about it! So, for posterity, here is the BWHT with the Pirates' side plates. Thanks again for beating the Giants, lads!

Baseball World Heavyweight Title Update: Giants Retain (Plus Game-Changing Announcement)

Over the weekend, The San Francisco Giants retained the Baseball World Heavyweight Title, by virtue of a draw with the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies' arch-nemesis, rain, interfered yet again, possibly costing the Rockies their fourth shot at the title. It was an ugly affair all around, with the champs finding themselves on the wrong side of an 11-2 drubbing to end the match.

The Giants' next challenge comes from the Brewers, and, as of this writing, the Giants have already captured the first fall of a three-game series.

Let's take a look at the title history to date.

Current Champion: San Francisco Giants 2015 BASEBALL WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE HISTORY
CHAMPION	WON FROM	REIGN LENGTH	SUCCESSFUL DEFENSES
1) San Francisco Giants	San Diego Padres (9/28/14)	6 days	1 (vs. AZ)
2) San Diego Padres	San Francisco Giants (4/12/15)	13 days	2 (vs. CHC, COL)
3) Los Angeles Dodgers	San Diego Padres (4/25/15)	25 days	6 (vs. SFG, AZ, MIL, COL, MIA, COL)
4) San Francisco Giants	Los Angeles Dodgers (5/20/15)	7 days (through 5/26)	1 (vs. COL)

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With that bit of business out of the way, it's time to change the game.

Introducing...the SoSG World Championship.


Joc holds up the new title belt, modeled after the NWO World Title.
What is the SoSG World Championship, you ask? It's simple. It imagines an alternate timeline where the Dodgers never lost the Baseball World Heavyweight Title to the Giants. Yes, the BWHT championship committee has gone mad with power and destroyed any illusion of impartiality. We're a Dodgers blog and we've awarded "our guys" their own belt. Not unlike when Brock Lesnar took the WWE title to Smackdown, forcing Eric Bischoff to create a belt out of thin air to hand to Triple H:


My thought process on this stemmed from my love of the uber-nerdy WWE Linear Title, chronicled by Voices of Wrestling. The following passage directly inspired the SoSG World Championship:

Due to the odd, and previously unprecedented, circumstances from WWE Night of Champions 2014, we’ve added the WWE Linear Championship #DarkestTimeline. Seth Rollins beat Roman Reigns on that event, in an official match, via forfeit. Because the match began, and the referee stopped it due to forfeit, it is treated as a ref stoppage. A ref stoppage is a valid way for the title to change hands, so Seth Rollins won the WWE Linear Championship from Reigns on that night. However, due to controversy, and honestly the thought that it would just be fun to track, the #DarkestTimeline (A reference to NBC’s Community) was created. The #DarkestTimeline sees Reigns retaining the WWE Linear Title, as if it never changed hands due to the forfeit. So, we have a split lineage in a way. Rollins won the Linear Title, while Reigns retained with the #DarkestTimeline.

So, yes, the Dodgers legitimately lost the BWHT to the Giants. BUT...because my recap of the series described the loss as a forfeit (due to the offense not showing up), it became the launching point for this alternate timeline.

The SoSG World Championship will follow the same rules as the BWHT, with two exceptions:

1. This is OUR belt. If the Dodgers lose a series, but we don't feel like giving up the belt, we won't give up the belt. Again, we are ABSOLUTELY biased and crooked when it comes to this title. We have embraced our role as heel authority figures and we DO NOT like to lose.

2. If the BWHT belt-holder faces the SoSG WC belt-holder, the match will be a title unification match.

Current Champion: Los Angeles Dodgers 2015 SoSG WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY
CHAMPION	WON FROM	REIGN LENGTH	SUCCESSFUL DEFENSES
1) Los Angeles Dodgers	Awarded by SoSG (5/22/15)	5 days	1 (vs. SD)

Celebration erupts at SoSG Headquarters.
Despite succumbing to corruption, we will continue to chronicle the lineage of BOTH made-up championships. The BWHT lineage will be on the up-and-up. The SoSG WC is our toy to play with. This will either be really fun, or really stupid. (Perhaps both.)

Confused about what the BWHT is and how it works? Hit the BWHT link on the sidebar for all the relevant posts to date.