Friday's Fast Five: Week of 10.27

The World Series Without Baseball’s Best Teams or Best Players (The Wall Street Journal): The Rangers and Diamondbacks meeting in the World Series seems almost impossible to fathom. They combined for a .537 winning percentage during the regular season, an all-time low for teams meeting in the World Series. As the postseason unfolded, however, the Rangers and Diamondbacks kept winning. MLB views the parity of pedigree as a feature, a shining example that any organization can realistically compete for a championship regardless of their payroll, their market size or the starpower on their roster.

A Claude Monet Work Owned by the Same Family for 134 Years Could Fetch $12 Million (Barron's - Penta): The Palmers bought Le Moulin de Limetz (The Mill at Limetz), 1888, in 1892 from a gallery led at the time by Vincent van Gogh’s brother, Theo. Sotheby’s is offering the work, one of two that Monet painted of this river view, at its modern evening sale on Nov. 13 in New York for an estimate between US$12 million and US$18 million.

Forget the 'death of downtowns' — we're about to experience the Big City Renaissance (Business Insider): Cities like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago can use the short-term challenges of the remote-work shift to reinvent themselves, enhance their quality of life, and attract footloose residents. The emerging competition between regions triggered by working from home will strengthen the nation, allow cities to reinvigorate themselves for a century to come, and give Americans a larger menu of livable, affordable cities to choose from. Far from being the death knell for cities, the remote-work revolution could pave the way for a new urban boom.

How an Academic Uncovered One of the Biggest Museum Heists of All Time (The Wall Street Journal): When a Danish dealer named Ittai Gradel blew the whistle on stolen British Museum antiquities showing up online, it was the culmination of a yearslong antiques whodunit.

NASA's JWST discovers powerful jet stream in Jupiter's atmosphere (Axios): NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has found a never-before-seen jet stream in Jupiter's atmosphere. The new discovery shows off the power of the telescope to transform our understanding of not just extremely distant objects but worlds in our own solar system.