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What I'm Really Going to Watch Tonight
Is anyone actually going to watch Mr. Smiles and Mr. Grumble debate tonight? No way. It's October. It's playoff baseball time. The excitement of America's pasttime in October. These games count. The Evil Empire will try to get back to the series after last year's loss to the flash-in-the-pan Marlins. The Sox and the Astros finished up hot at the end of the season to pick up the wild card.

But if it was up to George W. Bush the poor Red Sox and Astros would be home and we would not have an extra round of exciting playoff baseball. 27-1. It hurts when Bud Selig (yes, Bud Selig) has history on his side and you don't. George Steinbrenner, Peter Angelos and the rest of the owners were all correct. George W. Bush was wrong. Can you imagine baseball without the wild card. Sigh. This man is clearly unfit to be president. Will the Kerry campaign please take a stand on this!
The baseball wild card is an awful aspect of America's greatest game. I'm as big of a Kerry supporter as there is, but baseball is baseball and Bush got this one right.
The problem with the wild card is this: a team that did not even win its division could still be able to win the entire championship -- a team that came in second place over a 162 game season still has a chance to knock out the team that finished in first place.

Posted at 10/7/2004 12:18:08 AM by Purist


I was just being a little sarcastic about the whole Bush thing. But I really think the WC is a good thing for baseball. You say the problem is that a team that did not even win it's own division could win the World Series. But take the situation this year. The two best teams in the AL are clearly the Yankees and Sox. In the old format we would have the Yankees and Angels playing. In the old format we could possibly have the best team playing the 2nd best team. But we could also have the best team playing the 3rd, 4th or anywhere down to the 8th best team in the league (albeit that would be the extreme case) while other deserving teams (i.e. this year's Red Sox) in that division would not get in. I think the WC is necessary for those cases. If someone wanted to expand the WC so that we had a 6 or 8 team playoff format then I would definitely oppose it. The WC has brought excitement by giving more teams a post season chance. But too many teams would lead to what we have in the first rounds of hockey and basketball.

Posted at 10/7/2004 2:49:44 PM by Jeff


 
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