How wild will more wild card be for Major League Baseball and is it really appropriate to expand the playoffs for 2012 or 2013 by adding two more teams? Maybe the playoffs will drag on until Thanksgiving and we will have World Series games in December.
Anyway, the Bud Selig maneuver is a sure thing and whether or not it is a good idea or not we will soon find out. For those who love the NBA and the NHL where you don’t even have to have a winning record to make the playoffs, this should be right up their alley. Truthfully, there is no major sport that I can think of that will definitely benefit from the broadening of its post-season playoffs besides college basketball.
One of these days we will embrace an NCAA tournament that will invite every single Division I school into the playoffs and that won’t bother us in the least. That futuristic version of the NCAAs will follow the pattern of the old Indiana high school tournament where every team gets a second season, whether it was a winner or loser during the regular campaign.
That sort of parallels the theory of giving every kid a ribbon who participates in a run or bicycle race or swim meet. But feeding the egos of youngsters as they are developing skills, just learning the games, and still deciding if they want to even play a sport after mommy and daddy signed them up, is a lot different than feeding the egos of professional athletes. Kids need to nurture their self-esteem. Professional athletes have large enough egos as is and they need to be reminded sometimes that reaching the playoffs is an achievement, not a gimmee, and that it is a reward of value.
Baseball purists were disturbed when the majors added American League and National League championship series, when the long season was cheapened by making the best teams continue to fight to go on although they had proven their mettle over months of play. Then came the wild card and another round of playoffs. While we have certainly seen some exciting baseball because the wild card exists, there is little doubt that there is less reward than ever for posting the best record during the regular season.
Once more teams are added to the mix then 10 of the majors’ 30 teams will be involved in the playoffs. It finally came to pass in the NFL that a 7-9 team qualified for the playoffs. How will we feel when an 80-82 baseball team makes it into the playoffs? We have already reached the point that the biggest winners in the regular season are routinely being knocked off in the playoffs, many of them shy of making it to the Series, nevermind winning it. Will no one care about the regular season at all?
The plan is not completely clear yet about just when more teams will become playoff competitors, or exactly how that will alter the current format. Extra wild-card teams may be required to play one another in a single elimination game for the right to go on. If that’s all there is, no big deal, we can cope. If there is an extra layer of multi-game playoffs in a playoff season that pretty much lasts a month already, the public at large (not including teams that are in it) may not embrace it.
For those who love the game, there is no such thing as too much baseball. For those who love the game’s history, they may be squirming in their chairs thinking about playoff baseball with teams that otherwise would deserve to go home at the end of September and rake leaves.
My impression is that two more teams is too much. If baseball shows me I’m wrong and the games are filled with drama and compelling story lines, I’ll be happy. But right now I’m a skeptic.