Why Playoffs Narratives Are Steaming Piles of Pooh

"All good writing is storytelling."

The challenge for TV networks introducing playoff baseball to America is how to leverage six months of games into a compelling backstory and then pivot to a new narrative as the postseason games play out.

For television is all about story-telling. The baseball playoffs -- indeed any tournament -- is just a collection of games absent the organizing narrative. It's those stories, in fact, that drive interest in Olympic sports like the javelin throw, biathlon, bobseld and other competitions that we never watch otherwise. The stories tell us why we should care, whom we should root for and how it all fits together.

Without narratives, the broadcasts are not possible. And therein lies the rub.

As we have established with painful repetition, baseball's playoffs are largely random at either the game or the series level. The better starting pitcher confers a shockingly microscopic advantage, and the better team over 162 games, even with an ostensible home field edge, doesn't seem to win with any regularity.  Mike Trout resembles Mario Mendoza's little brother. Lorenzo Cain channels Willie Mays. And so on.

So the narratives, for the most part, have to be invented. The Royals are a team of destiny. The great Clayton Kershaw "can't win the big one." The Giants are "clutch." Adam Wainwright is a "big game pitcher."

How else to explain why all the best teams are at home while the hitless wonders from KC play their fellow Wild Card rep from San Fran in the Series? How else to make sense of two 88-win teams squaring off for the title, particularly when the Giants played below .500 after the first month of the season? How else to rationalize eight straight high-wire wins for the Royals over superior teams?

But the explanations are all hooey. Both teams have simply gotten hot -- and lucky. Mike Moustakas hit .212 for the Royals and spent time in the Minors before his playoff hero turn. Travis Ishikawa was left on the trash heap by Pittsburgh this season before he smacked the walk-off pennant clincher for the Giants. It's just the way baseball is.

And despite the announcer bleatings, baseball is amoral. Winners aren't morally superior to losers, nor are those who struggle and persevere morally superior to the mega-talented. Underdogs have no claims over favorites; defense and relief pitching are not greater in God's eyes than three-run homers, if I may speak for God. Who, by the way, did not suddenly become a Kansas City Royals fan.

And now one of these teams, which have combined for 16 playoff victories in 18 tries, will suddenly lose its invincibility. The playoff slugger will lose his stroke, the base thief will meet his catching match and the big game pitcher will gack one up. And just like that, the narrative carefully cultivated for two weeks will have to change to accommodate the World Series. Moral supremacy will suddenly be seen to switch allegiances, as if it were momentum's cousin.

But no, it is, sadly, much more banal. One guy tries to hurl a sphere at high velocity with yaw and roll. Another guy tries to mash it with a wooden stick. A third guy tries to snatch it in his over-sized leather pouch and zing it to his friends. One gaggle of talented fellas will do it just a tad better than the opposing gaggle over the next seven games, though they might not have in some previous or subsequent seven. And that, at very last, is its entire significance.