Okay, So I Might Have Been Wrong

If you're over a certain age, you remember the nation coming to a halt during the World Series.

It was the best team from the National League battling the best team from the American League for the championship.

Willie Mays against Mickey Mantle.

Bob Gibson and Carl Yastzremski.

The Big Red Machine versus the Bronx Bombers.

Teams that didn't know each other squaring off not just for team supremacy but for league bragging rights. The DH league versus the pure league. The senior circuit against the upstarts. Natural grass or (God help us) turf.

Baseball was the national pastime then. Even as football was eclipsing it in popularity, it maintained an exalted place on the sports map.

It's just a different time now.

• Baseball is a sport of regional interest more than national interest, so millions of Americans don't watch if their team is not involved. 
• Eliminating most league distinctions has reduced league partisanship that once fed World Series interest. 
• Inter-league play and movement of players through free agency have sapped the Series of its fascination. 
• Multiple divisions and Wild Cards have drawn out the post-season into a month of games and added a randomness to the final match-up, which sometimes leads to mediocre teams playing for the title.
• Playoffs have pushed the Series so late into the Fall that the weather is often unacceptable for baseball.

For the most part, these are unfortunate side effects of necessary changes. But it means the World Series will never again hold the nation in thrall.

So, How I Was Wrong
This was not my starting point when I bemoaned the addition of a third division in each league and the introduction of the Wild Card. I wanted the best teams in the World Series. Fewer playoff slots don't yield fewer races; they yield races that have more urgency.

The truth though is that baseball has found that sweet spot. The current set-up offers half the fan bases a rooting interest while also keeping the bar reasonably high for entrance into the tournament. And it disadvantages the weaker teams that sneak in.

This year's AL Wild Card race has turned into a seven-team mud-wrestling tournament. With 45 games to go, half the league is within 2.5 games of a ticket to October. Without the Wild Card, Houston, Washington and Los Angeles would be galloping away with pennant dreams, leaving Boston, Cleveland and New York in the one playoff race.

I'm coming to appreciate 10 playoff spots, even as I'm offended by teams like the '03 Marlins and (especially) the '06 Cardinals dogpiling in the end. I would like to see the team with the league's best record afforded a greater advantage in their series against the surviving Wild Card -- like all the games at home. There is something objectionable about a team with 87 wins riding a couple of favorable bounces to four victories out of seven against an opponent 15 games better during the season.

But something else has changed that makes that objection nearly moot: the playoffs are no longer an extension of the season; they are a separate event. As we've seen, teams alter their make-up specifically for the post-season. The attributes of a great regular season team don't apply in the tournament -- and every team knows that going in.

It's a New Era
In Seattle right now, and Anaheim, and the Metroplex, the Twin Cities, Tampa Bay and western Missouri, people can still get excited about their nine despite 115 games of abject mediocrity and a 15-game deficit in their division.

And there's something to be said for that. 

Let's just hope the best teams survive the gauntlet and square off come Halloween.