The Chris Moeller Archives

The Greatest Stories Badly Sold

We're at a very low ebb in the way that Major League Baseball is currently covered in the sports media. Game recap coverage is particularly bad in the electronic arena. Anyone who watches a ballgame from first pitch to last, either in person, on television, or on radio, and then turns to watch highlights of that game on the evening's "Sportscenter" knows that the highlights are rarely reflective of the drama. While the outcome of a particular game nearly always hinges on the batter-by-batter narrative of a key inning or two, ESPN typically summarizes the action by piecing together a string of clips of the home runs that were hit. Often, of course, there's a necessary overlap, but the current "dumbing-down" of the sport's nightly action is doing a terrible disservice to the economic health of the game.

Professional basketball is covered in the same lazy fashion, but what other choice do the producers have in that case? The nature of hoops is that every game virtually mirrors the last until roughly that 7/8ths mark when the most likely victor tends to emerge. The amount of scoring is so vast that all an editor can really do is cobble together clips of a couple of baskets scored by the leading scorer in the game and then wrap with the key possessions in the final two minutes.

Baseball broadcasters and journalists are in a time warp when it comes to chronicling the game's pennant races. This is due either to negligence or an unholy pact with Major League Baseball's corporate offices to sugarcoat the damage done to the integrity of the game. The Wild Card playoff system continues to be promoted as if it does nothing but enhance the excitement and popularity of the game, though the common arguments in its favor often lack even basic logic. First, if there's a particularly exciting game in the first round of playoffs, some baffoon on television will tell us that the Wild Card system is to thank for setting up the great action, but you're going to have exciting ballgames played regardless. The drama of club elimination would only shift elsewhere.

The Wild Card system gets credit for keeping more teams in the running for the post-season longer, but it's just as often simultaneously polluting the division races. Ooh, we're told, seven teams still have a shot at the Wild Card at this relatively late date. Of course they do. Most teams are statistically likely to finish within five games on either side of .500. That's not exciting. It's a fetish for mediocrity. Six teams, or 20 percent of the entire league, will win their division each year. Champions of the four-team American League West spray champaign in their clubhouse one night each September, but all that that particular team has accomplished is eliminated three teams from World Series contention.

You won't hear anyone else talking about it, but what did the Wild Card race actually generate this year in either league that was positive? The only club out of 30 that had its season significantly extended by the format was the Philadelphia Phillies.

And now what did the Wild Card system cost us? It cost us the opportunity to see three division races decided on the last day of the year. Baseball's "yes-men" tried to convince us that there were great races for the AL Central and the NL West flags, but the Tigers and Twins both knew they were in the post-season already after the White Sox faded, and the Dodgers and Padres only had to outlast the Phillies in the Wild Card to both make it in. How big would that blown umpires' call on the bases have been Sunday in San Diego if the game had actually meant something other than determining which team would start the playoffs in New York against the Mets and which team would begin their marathon playoff season at home against the Cardinals? And if baseball still gave us only four divisions (each with 7 or 8 teams,) the stakes on Sunday would have been that much higher because the prize would have been a place in the Championship Series rather than just a Division Series. The system's become so damned convoluted that it took me half an hour to explain the National League playoff situation on Sunday to a friend, and this friend aced her SATs once upon a time. How are all those murky potential playoff scenarios good for the game's marketability?

An ESPN talking-head stated last night that the Cardinals had very little going for them in the pending post-season, in essence because they've played so badly during the last two weeks of the year. But what sport has this guy been watching for the last decade? Aside from the fact that statisticians say September performance has little or no bearing on October success, four Wild Cards have now won the World Series. Even though 20 percent of league teams now win their division every year, only one team in that 20 percent has won the World Series since 2001.

The Cardinals were 13 1/2 games worse than the Mets this year, yet the Mets' only reward for that advantage is an extra home game in each round of the playoffs. The Cardinals' best starting pitcher will still be able to start two of the team's first four playoff games on full rest against a team they've beaten all six times in post-season contests. The Mets' best starting pitcher will be fortunate to pitch again before June. If this forgettable and often embarassing Cardinals team advances past the first playoff round, they'll face either the short-armed Mets, or have home-field advantage against a Dodgers team they beat all seven times in the regular season. Is that justice for a team that won only 83 of 161 games during the season?

Rooting for mediocrity isn't fun. Neither is watching 85-win teams duke it in the World Series while 95-win clubs watch from the sidelines, and neither is being worn out by all of the televised post-season action before Game 1 of the Fall Classic even arrives. The commissioner and his waterboys will point to added television revenue for the extra round of playoffs when deeming their flawed system a success, but would the National Football League score a more lucrative deal if it replaced its "event" championship with a best-of-seven? Point being-- maybe it's this very dillution of the late season action that has caused World Series TV ratings to plummet to their recent all-time lows. That's something the game's commentators should at least be talking about. Letting more participants call themselves winners might work well in the middle-school art competition, but this our National Pastime here. Let's focus on the best of the best.

posted by CM @ 4:21 PM