I'm admittedly an old-school, traditionalist kind of guy, particularly when it comes to baseball. I'm not quick to embrace change. Thus I have an appropriate amount of apprehension when considering two changes being proposed in Major League Baseball.
One change will add one more wild card to the playoffs of each league. So each league would have 5 playoff teams under this scenario. Apparently there would be a wild-card round before the divisional round. Whether this would be just one game or more is not clear.
Now to be fair, I wasn't sure I liked it when it was decided that baseball would split into 3 divisions and have 4 playoff teams in each of the AL and NL. I have to admit it's worked out pretty well. To go to 5 playoff teams and extra games, though? I don't think that's really needed. I thought the idea was NOT to push the World Series into November.
The other big proposal would balance the two leagues by taking one team from the 16-team NL and adding it to the 14-team AL. Then there would be either 6 5-team divisions, or two 15-team leagues with no divisions. This would also necessitate one Interleague game per day, meaning Interleague play, love it or hate it, would be here to stay.
At first glance, I imagine that most would be in favor of such a move. People love symmetry. Everything should be equal, or even, as far as most are concerned. It's hard to argue against that point. After all, the NBA, NFL, and NHL are all constructed with two equal conferences.
One thing that makes baseball different, and unique, is the fact that technically these are still two separate leagues. They're not as separate as they once were, but still are two separate leagues with distinct styles of play. I don't have a problem with this. What's more, without getting too much into why,I don't have a problem with one league having the DH and the other league making pitchers bat. I just don't see any real need to make these changes. The last 10 World Series, if I'm not mistaken, have been split evenly-5 wins each for the AL and NL. So I would argue that there isn't a clear advantage one way or the other. The All-Star Game has been a different story, with the AL dominating in recent years, but the NL also owned the ASG from 1960-1982. Sure, one could look at individual stats and point out some hitting and pitching differences that are directly related to the DH (or lack thereof), but so what?
There have been changes in baseball that absolutely were needed. For example, before the splits into 3 divisions, the NL had Atlanta and Cincinnati playing in the Western Division. So that was an example of something being broken. My biggest concern now is this-I fear a slippery slope toward the eventual dissolution altogether of the AL/NL separation. It's already been put forth as idea. Some would like to eliminate the leagues and totally re-align, putting teams like the Yankees and Mets into the same division. I would hate to see baseball sever its ties to the past like that.
Of course my approach is that of the history buff, the person who watches the Ken Burns documentaries on PBS and cherishes the ties between today's game and yesterday's. Baseball, more than the other major sports, is really tied to the history of America itself. I realize that things in life are changing rapidly in this century (and needless to say I'm not favor of a lot of it)and I know that today's game dosen't totally resemble the game in its post-Civil War beginnings, but please-let's not get carried away with sweeping changes.
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