Only One Person From Illinois Will Be In The World Series

And he won't even be playing baseball. 

The World Series begins tonight. The first pitch between the Rays and the Dodgers is at 7:09 tonight on FOX. Without the Cubs or the White Sox in the series, local fans might not know who to root for. A lot of the time when there isn't a local team in a championship I like to see which players might be from the area that I could get behind.

Well, bad news there. Apparently Illinois isn't exactly a baseball hotspot when it comes to developing major league talent as there are a grand total of zero players from the Land of Lincoln playing in this year's Fall Classic.

Then I went on to the two coaching staffs. Nothing there either.

Then I went to the umpires and found one fellow Illinoisian.

His name is  Mark Carlson and he was born in Joliet. He and his family still live in Illinois.

So I guess I'll be backing the blue this postseason. Umpire blue that is.

This is Mark's second World Series. He will be manning the right field foul line for Game 1 but if the series goes the distance it will be Mark Carlson calling balls and strikes for a deciding game 7.