Bread and Circuses

The Fall Classic? How about the Fall Farce.

The Boston RedSox won the last round of the Major League Baseball playoffs. Not the World Series.

The World Series used to be a matchup of the best teams in baseball. It was the Yankees-Dodgers with Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin against the great Dodger infield. RedSox-Reds with the Fisk homerun not enough to beat the Big Red Machine. The Gas House Gang taming the Tigers.

But not the Colorado Rockies and Boston RedSox.

Want to know how to get to the last round of the baseball playoffs? First lose your division. During the last ten years we’ve seen the wild card win three World Championships, 8 pennants, and make the LCS 13 times. What’s wrong with this picture? And what’s the point of winning in the regular season?

Wild cards have an advantage. They are usually playing meaningful games up to the last week of the season. It’s an edge a team that clinches early doesn’t have. Human nature, sports psychology, call it what you will. Getting hot late is better than clinching early.

Which defeats the purpose.

The Super Bowl gives you two great teams. The NBA finals usually cough up an appropriate sacrifice to the San Antonio Spurs. The Stanley Cup is a free for all. But that’s OK, it’s hockey’s season within a season. You know that going in.

But the World Series is supposed to be an event. And it isn’t. How many of you bothered to watch? How many would watch on a night when there was a good college football game on? Did you feel like the RedSox and Indians was where the real action was? Was the only time you were on the edge of your seat was to reach for the remote? More to the point, did you care?

The World Series was a party with alot of half deflated balloons. Worse, it was our party and we didn’t get what we wanted. We wanted the Cubs or Phillies against the RedSox or Yankees. We wanted the best. We got what Charlie Brown stares sadly at on Halloween. A rock. Or Rockies.

Colorado was an embarrassment for the same reason they didn’t win their division. They didn’t have the experience, didn’t have the nerve, didn’t have the pitching. Colorado was the Not Ready for Prime Time team. UXB. A dud. Feel good story? Who’s feeling good today?

What do to for it? You could do the right thing, which would be to pare down the number of divisions to two. Have a best of seven LCS followed by a best of seven World Series. Start the season a week earlier, play a few doubleheaders along the way, finish up NLT October 20.

TV wouldn’t like it. Nuts to them. Did they like the ratings for Colorado and Boston? Did they like the thrilling Arizona-Colorado series that not even the hometown fans cared about?

MLB won’t get on board. The illusion of pennant races brings out crowds in September. Gives the low budget operations something to shoot for. But the race for the wild card isn’t a real pennant race. Remember the RedSox-Yankees down the stretch this year. Didn’t mean anything. The loser was in as wild card. How hard did the teams go for the division? How much did the Yankees stress their rotation? What did it matter?

When Joe Torre was fired he called the post season a crap shoot. Two weeks later Larry Lucchino explained the RedSox management strategy was to get to the playoffs because after that, you guessed it, it’s a crap shoot.

Well a crap shoot isn’t good enough for baseball. Not by a long shot. It is time for Bud Selig, against all odds, against the natural inertia of the powers that rule the game, against TV, against history to fix this mess. If nothing else, take away all home games in the first round from the wild card.

And give us back the World Series before there is no one left who cares.

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