Yanks split, Sox drop 2, other teams play
If the Cardinals meet some of my basic post-season expectations, this blog will be preoccupied with baseball during the month of October. (It's already due, in part, to the pull of our grand and glorious game that I have failed to blog this week.) Here are three random thoughts to get the ball rolling on the 2005 post-season.--- Cardinals fans have grown accustomed to second class treatment by the TV networks. The noon starting time for Game 1 of the Division Series has become an almost annual St. Louis tradition. Townsfolk party at Kiener Plaza downtown, the teams take the field in bright sunshine, and I wear my Ozzie jersey to work. This year, the Cards' games appear to be last in network priority. TV execs have naturally climbed up the butts of the Yankees and Red Sox, but even today, as those teams travel, the Cards and Padres played a matinee to accomodate a prime-time start by former Yankees and Red Sox ace Roger Clemens. On Saturday, the Cards will attempt to clinch the first series in a contest that will begin at 10 o'clock PM in St. Louis. Meanwhile, baseball's post-season ratings have dropped to such a pathetic level that FOX didn't broadcast either prime-time game last night.
--- The most infuriating part of the TV-- and internet-- coverage of baseball's post-season is the league's insistance on pushing post-season stats. After the player's first at-bat of the playoffs, we never again see their season statistics. I know what the Cardinals did, I watched all the games, but if Xadier Nady or Ben Johnson come up with runners on base for the Padres, I don't give a shit that they're 2 for 6, or 0 for 2 in the Series, I want to know what they did during their previous 200 or 300 at-bats. Baseball should put baseball people in charge of these decisions, and it's clear they don't. FOX, in particular, hates baseball. They behave as though they constantly have to wake the fans up and dumb the game down, which admittedly sounds like FOX programming policy, except when you consider that it never treats the National Football League with such blatant disrespect.
--- Major League Baseball's apple-polishing broadcasters won't report what the bastardized six-division Wild Card playoff system cost fans this year, but I will.
If the 14-team American League were still divided into two divisions, like it was throughout the 1970s and 80s, we would have been treated to a one-game playoff between the Red Sox and Yankees, instead of the mucked-up "tie-breaker in the fine print" result we got. The Indians would have still been in contention with two or three teams into the last week, regardless of whether they were in an Eastern Division with Boston and New York, or in the West with the White Sox and Angels. And the stakes would have been much higher for all concerned because the reward would be a place in the League Championship Series, rather than just a Division Series. (I also blame the watered-down six-division format for allowing the lowly Padres into the playoffs with an 82-80 record. No wonder the Cardinals get relegated to ten o'clock.)
The National League East would have still been a great race between four or five teams. In fact, the NL's Houston Astros are the only team in either league that had their post-season chances significantly extended by the Wild Card format. And you'd have a hard time convincing me they deserved the second life.
On the day the Cardinals clinched the NL Central, the second-place Astros were 12 1/2 games out of first, and had lost 11 of 14 games to St. Louis head-to-head. The divisional deficit was roughly the same as last season, a season in which Houston managed to finagle a playoff rematch against the Cards as the league Wild Card. I ask you-- is this fair to the Cardinals? Haven't they earned more of an advantage in this matchup than simply an extra home game? Is this all consistent with the first 125 years of professional baseball tradition? Does the Masters golf tournament culminate with the two low scorers going head-to-head and evenly onto the 18th, regardless of score, with the leader allowed to hit from the ladies' tee? (There's no ladies' tee at Augusta, but you get my point.)
I have two solutions to the dumbing-down of baseball's post-season. The first is especially unlikely. Contract the league by two teams. (I suggest Washington and Tampa Bay.) Return to four divisions, each with 7 teams and old-fashioned pennant races on the square. Under terms of the current collective bargaining agreement, owners have to wait until the end of either the 2007 or 2008 season to implement a contraction (I don't remember which,) but at such a point, they can disband up to four teams without union approval. Returning to only two post-season rounds would restore meaning to baseball's unique 162-game regular season, and would surely boost long-lagging World Series TV ratings as well, by cutting the fat from baseball's bloated TV schedule in October.
The second, and admittedly, more realistic solution would be to toughen the road of Wild Card teams (who collectively have won each of the last three World Series.) I suggest adding another Wild Card team to each playoff, and pitting the two teams against each other in a one-game matchup to be played the Monday after the regular season ends. Both teams would be forced to expend a starting pitcher in a do-or-die situation before advancing to meet a division winner.
But that's not enough. I would also strip the Wild Card teams of all home games that follow in the league playoffs. They could still receive the same percentage of the league's post-season profits, their fans would be grateful that their second-place heroes got to play in any post-season games at all, and their home-field rights would be restored if they reached the World Series, in deference to tradition and fairness between the two leagues.
Either of these well-reasoned plans would be welcome improvements, either by returning the polish to the six month regular season marathon, the Fall Classic, or both. Baseball was a much better game before it was gutted with self-loathing.
---
And Go Cards! Let's win it for the old ballyard!
posted by CM @ 8:12 PM
7 Comments:
Did you really wear your Ozzie jersey the first day of the playoffs? Or did you ditch that to look more like Jim Edmonds?
Flatterer. I can't help it if people think I look like Jim Edmonds.
Anyone can look like Edmonds when they are bent over Piazza like that.
Keep my blog out of the gutter please.
Chris-when you watch a baseball game, do you feel you have wasted 3.5 hours of your life that you will never get back?
Three and half hours is much too long for any game. The last game I attended at Busch a week ago would have been tortuously long, if I hadn't been soaking in every final moment at the park. Most modern millennium games (regular season, anyway) are played within 2 hours and 45 minutes, so if a nine inning game has lasted 3:30, you're probably watching a game that has been dulled with longer-commercial breaks, and I agree whole-heartedly with your over-riding sentiment. The longer breaks are not good for the action on the field, either.
As to, perhaps, a larger question as to baseball's appeal, I find that it's layered with the textures of social exploration and regional distinction, personal ecstasy and torture. It's cerebral.
The pace is conversational, but it's peppered with dramatic flourishes. (I view a 21-14 game in football the same way I do a 3-2 baseball game. The games are roughly the same length in duration, and you can enjoy watching the scoring develop, but baseball has grand slams, which are like scoring four touchdowns on one play, and you can't be eliminated by the clock. A goal line play in football usually means that you only have to wait for another down to punch it in, but the stakes of a play at the plate in baseball are always a run, a baserunner, and an out.)
With the benefits of time and investing, I've become so attuned to baseball's history that everything that I see happening on the field, especially during October, harkens back to something I've experienced or read about from the past. Many friends and family members are fans-- mostly of differing teams, and of teams other than the Cardinals-- so my competitive juices are constantly fueled.
One of the most appealing aspects of baseball-- especially for people like me, who are more linear-minded or number-oriented-- is the game's structure. I was taught how to keep score at the age of eight, and it is so satisfying to watch a game while keeping the official record.
If my team gets a lead, I race to jot down each opposing out, counting down from the initial count of 27. I really watch the game from a pitcher's standpoint in that way. Scoring runs is gravy, but get those outs, baby. Good pitching keeps the game moving, also. It's an aggressive way of watching the game.
I've been to more than 150 MLB games in my life, 125 of those at the same venue, but each one is still distinct. This is partly because of the different people I've traveled with, but mostly, it's because I have a scorecard of each game on my shelf in which to constantly reference. I don't think people understand what exactly this means. Baseball's version of hieroglyphics grants me a shorthand reference to every play I've ever seen. Why even pack a camera? Contrastly, I've only been to eight NFL games-- all during my adulthood, even-- and I could no longer tell you a damn thing that happened in a couple of those games.
I recommend keeping score if you're bored by the game, and let me know if I need to post a tutorial. It would be my pleasure to do so, if it heightens your ability to enjoy the Cardinals' championship run of 2005.
Chris- you are the Iowa Peach - nice job.
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