Baseball’s Divisions a Travesty

You all know me as an old-fashioned man, a sentimentalist. I like the predictable, the comfortable; I resist change.

I like “Lady of Spain” played on the accordion, “Oh, Susanna” on the harmonica, Victor Herbert, good guys in white hats, opera heroines to be consumptive, movie stars to be handsome and endings to be happy.

So, I’m not at all happy with what’s been happening to one of the favorite sports of all us cornballs, baseball, of late.

I don’t know why they’ve done to it what they’ve done, but that staple of the grand old game, the “pennant chase,” is no such thing anymore.

In my day, baseball was a solid, predictable, rock-ribbed, dependable sport.

There were eight teams in each league and they played each other the exact same number of times, 22 a year--11 at home, 11 on the road.

You knew which were western teams and which, eastern, and you had an absolutely legitimate pennant winner, one that had the best record over 154 games against the same competition and on the same competitive ladder.

Look at what you have now . . .

Take the National League. It is now, like all baseball, split in two. In one division, two teams that are four games over .500 share the lead. In the other division, a team that is six games over .500 is in fourth place, seven games out of the lead.

In one division, a team that is three games over .500 is only a half-game out of the lead. In the other division, a team that is one game over .500 is next to last, 9 1/2 games out.

In one division, the leader is 20 games over .500, in the other, four.

Equity? Try travesty. Make sense out of that. A team that can barely break .500 will get an even shot for the pennant in a playoff with a team that is 20 games over .500.

The American League is not much better. A team that is playing .500 ball is in third place in one division, only 4 1/2 games out. A team that is seven games over .500 is in fourth place in the other division, 8 1/2 games behind.

Think about it. The leader in one AL division would be fourth in the other. In the NL, the West co-leaders would be tied for fifth in the East.

The Detroit Tigers, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees would be leading the Western Division in their league. If they were in it.

The St. Louis Cardinals, New York Mets, Montreal Expos and Philadelphia Phillies would be leading the Western Division in their league.

The bad news is, in a short playoff series, the team with the patently inferior record might prevail, and the better team might get eliminated.

In 1973, the New York Mets won the National League East with a record only three games over .500, 82-79. In the other division that year, the Cincinnati Reds won 99 games and lost 63. If they had been in the same standings, the Cardinals would have won over the Mets by a whopping 16 1/2 games. In fact, three Western Division teams would have beaten the Mets.

Never mind. In the truncated five-game championship series that year, the Mets prevailed. Life, as they say, ain’t fair.

Five games, of course, can be inconclusive. If you’re only going to have five, why not three? One?

Baseball has recognized this and has gone to seven-game playoffs. (A five-game series last year would have put the California Angels in the World Series.)

This is nice. But not definitive. What really needs to be done, it seems to me, is to readjust the alignment annually. Don’t penalize a team unfairly because it’s in the wrong neighborhood. Don’t decide a pennant by geography.

One solution would be to judge teams on their won-lost records without regard to their arbitrary positioning. But this smacks of skiing or speed-skating against the clock. This is not baseball, either.

What I think would be workable, what I’d like to see, is a crossover provision that would reward the team or teams that do well by allowing them to transfer over to the division where their records would have won them a pennant.

There’s precedent for this. In British soccer, there was a provision for teams that finished last or couldn’t keep pace to be dropped down to a minor league, while an aggressive successful minor league team was brought up to replace it.

I am not lobbying for demotion to a Three-I League for laggards but I am interested in rewarding superior play. Why should a team that finishes 30 games over .500 be made to sit on the sidelines while a team that barely breaks .500 over 162 games gets to play in the league championship series--or even World Series? That’s not only unfair, it’s un-American.

If the Detroit Tigers miss a divisional championship by one game in their half of the draw, why shouldn’t they be permitted to switch over to where that record would win them the championship by 10 games?

It’s a disgrace to make the Tigers, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox butt heads for the right to meet a team any of them would bury over a regular season.

Why should the Chicago Cubs have to stay in a division where playing better than .500 ball barely keeps them out of the cellar, while in the other division, it would put them in the title fight, only half a game out?

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But in the kingdom of baseball, the team that wins 100 games should not be judged loser to one that wins 82. That’s like ruling two treys beat a full house.