New York Yankees and Red Sox Ensure There Will Be a Second Wild Card in 2012
August 5, 2011 · Harold Friend · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
Leave it to the greatest commissioner in sports history to have the media demand a second wild card.
The New York Yankees and their friends, the Boston Red Sox are tied for first place. The three game series at Fenway Park that starts tonight is virtually meaningless since it is almost certain that both teams will make the playoffs.
Pennant races no longer exist. They have become playoff races.
The situation is exactly what Bud Selig wants. The media are in a frenzy pointing out how the Yankees-Red Sox would be meaningful if there were a second wild card.
If the season were to end today, Aug. 5, the Eastern Division winner would play the Detroit Tigers, which means facing Justin Verlander twice in a five-game series. The wild card would play the Texas Rangers, which last season’s Yankees discovered is no walk in the park.
If there were a second wild card, and you can bet all the gold that allegedly is still in Ft. Knox that there will be in 2012, either the Yankees or Red Sox would have to play the Los Angeles Angels one game to determine the “Wild Card Winner.”
Such a situation would decrease the chances of either the Yankees or Red Sox in the Division Series. Would either team use its ace in the one game or gamble and save him for the next round or spring training?
The Yankees and the Red Sox are far from being mediocre teams, but that doesn’t mean that in the future, possibly the near future, a mediocre team that finished 10 or 15 games behind the first wild card qualifies for the playoffs and gets to the playoffs.
More playoff games, regardless of the level of play, means more money, both in tickets sold and in television revenues. Adding an additional playoff round benefits the owners and some of their employees. It does not benefit the fans who must endure November weather conditions at the ball park.
Excellence is becoming an illusion.
One baseball executive made an appealing point, especially to those individuals who play the lotteries.
“If you’re a fan, you don’t want your team to have a six or seven percent better chance at making the playoffs? You don’t want to see games in October in your home stadium? You don’t want that?”
One baseball owner came right to the point, saying “our ideas aren’t as much what’s right for the sport as what’s right for revenues.”
Since throwing out his trial balloon with respect to a second wild card a few months ago, Mr. Selig has been silent on the issue. Now the media has taken over, supporting the contention that he is the greatest of all sports bosses.
There is no way to prevent a second wild team being added in 2012 and there is little opposition to it. The owners and the television executives run the game, not the older fans who are dinosaurs.
It will be even more of a rarity when baseball’s best team wins the World Series.
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