From THE VN/VO:
Baseball analogies are almost always worthless. They foolishly assume that factors such as "wanting it more than the next guy" and "being due" for a home run are somehow mathematically relevant to a game at any given moment on the field. But this doesn't mean that what happens in baseball is never analogous to our lives. Something has been brewing in the evolution of America's pastime in recent years that tells us a lot about the state of our entire culture.
Losers are now winners.
Through the manipulation of schedules and the architecture of the playoffs, plus the creation of six small divisions and a wild card, Major League Baseball has engineered a system where nearly every team- even the losing ones- is still in the playoff race in the final weeks of the season. This year we came close to having the first team with a losing record make it to the playoffs. The San Diego Padres staved off that fate at the last hour. The last three "World Champions" have been teams that were not even the best in their divisions.
Baseball is allowing this for obvious reasons. As in other sports, the owners realized that expanding the playoffs to include more teams brings more people to the games. Fans don't seem to care much if the best teams don't always make it to the finals, as long as the team they root for has a shot at the championship.
This is not baseball's- or any sports league's- fault. Sports is a business. And fans seem content that the system is fair. The worst of the worst teams never reach the playoffs. There are losers in life, and they still get their just deserts.
However, when we start talking about the "average Joes" of the league, it gets touchier. Most average teams have excuses as to why they're merely average: injuries, bad management, not enough revenue generation, and so on. They feel that they deserve a shot at greatness. That's understandable. But why is it OK with fans?
This is a case where sports mirrors our culture as a whole. We've developed into a society that believes that "good enough" has the potential to be great, and that all past transgressions are forever forgivable, as long as we "do better next time."
Don't get me wrong- we're not heading toward a socialist culture, where everything and everyone is considered inherently and eternally equal, no matter what they do. We understand the nonproductivity of that. Ours is a more complex cultural condition.
Article comments
1 - Yashin
While I generally agree with the sentiment of your article, I have to take exception to your claim that 'soccer' is "one of the ultimate team sports where individual players are practically anonymous".
Football (what you would call soccer) has produced countless individuals of renowned skill over the last two centuries. Boys from Glasgow tenaments, Manchester terraces, London estates, Paris backstreets, Sao Paolo slums have all become legends of the game.
Dismissing the game of football as such a simplistic, anonymos pursuit is to diminish the moments of great individual play which millions of fans remember.
Watch Maradonna in the 1986 World Cup and tell me that he was 'practically anonymous'.
2 - Mark Edward Manning
I'm sorry, but the entire vein of this piece rubbed off as "The Yankees should be entitled to a WS trophy year after year after year."
The '80s and early '90s were awesome because every year, there was a new champion. The turnover was anything but predictable. Now we've reached back to that era somewhat, and if the wild card helped that process along, then all for the best. I'm no fan of Bud Selig, but his wild-card idea was wonderful. For a runner-up like the Florida Marlins or the Red Sox to be able to win it all has made baseball a lot more interesting: Which it never was for three years, '98-'00.
3 - Yashin
I read Christopher's article as a 'may the best team win' argument, but that team hasn't always been the Yankees. On paper they might have the best team of the last 20 years, but there have been several teams in recent years who have out-performed them over the regular season.
Besides, baseball isn't soccer, playing well over the regular season will only get you to the play-offs, after that a team has to prove itself over series and this can't be done by playing sub-.500 ball with a few solid hitters and a couple of good pitchers. How often does a good regular season team limp into the playoffs and a mediocre team peak for them?
My biggest complaint is that the divisional series are simply too much of a lottery, the best of 5 format can be won by teams with little or no pitching depth.