Baseball has never been noted as a game that moves swiftly, on or off the field.
In fact it is its lazy summer afternoon in the sun approach that has endeared itself to generations of fans.
Forever they have treasured their history and just let the game play out.
But it is about time they actually started the discussion of increasing the size of the playoff pool.
While adding a Wild Card in each league was deemed controversial in 1995, expanding upon it is now way over due.
Even some baseball purists are slowly coming around.
“I’m not completely there yet,” Toronto Blue Jays president Paul Beeston said in an interview this week. “But I listen to all the arguments on both sides, I think you have to have an open mind about it. There are some compelling arguments in favour of expanding the playoffs and the ones against it go back to tradition.
“We as an industry are different from the other sport leagues and being different there’s a sanctity to a schedule that lets the best teams proceed to the playoffs.”
The problem is it’s not as simple as being able to call the best teams the top team in each league — as was the case in the pre-wild card days. It is to the point where you can’t even just take the top teams from each division plus one anymore.
With a 32 team league you deal with the issue of eliminating half the teams in the league from mathematical contention — although mathematically still eligible, some mountains are just too high to climb — by July. There are still three more months of the season left following that.
With hundred million dollar payrolls increasingly becoming the norm and never ending hike at the box office, you have to give the fans a reason to come to the ball park every night.
In the American League there were five teams within eight games of what would have been a second wild card spot, in the National League that number was down to three teams within seven games but with three more hanging on in the peripheral at 10 and 11 games back.
From a Canadian stand point, this would make the playoffs a legitimate dream for a team like the Toronto Blue Jays, who have been on the cusp of the playoffs several times since their second World Series title in 1993 but never able to break the Yankee/Red Sox blockade.
It would also help keep owners honest. It breaks down even more excuses by the owners in Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Florida who pocket millions in revenue sharing but put little of it back into the club, claiming their small market status keeps them from being competitive.
But it is also not as if the extra playoff spot — which would likely render itself down in a playoff series with the league’s other wild card team to advance to the divisional series — means a garbage team is getting in cheap. On the contrary. In the 16 playoffs since the wild card came into play, a wild card team has claimed the World Series title four times — the Marlins 1997 and 2003, the Anaheim Angels in 2002 and the Boston Red Sox in 2004. Moreover a wild card team has lost the World Series another five times.
These aren’t teams getting in on a free pass. Often they are playing the best baseball down the stretch just to make it into the post season. In a 162-game campaign teams are going to run hot and cold and it is not unusual for a team to build a massive winning record early only to falter down the stretch, but still get in because they played a weaker division and ran up a huge lead early. The current system punishes teams to harshly for a slow start or one that is forced to adjust mid season and turn things around. It far too often knocks out the great comeback story far too early — and once teams are even the slightest bit out of contention nowadays they ship in the prospects and try to shed veterans and salary.
The best thing baseball can do for itself is to allow it to continue to grow.
But this being baseball, we will probably have a few more lazy summers before it gets done.
jaldrich@reddeeradvocate
www.twitter.com/Ridingthepine03