I like the one-game Wild Card playoff. I think it is a refreshing addition to Major League Baseball, where series tend to drag on longer than The English Patient. This afternoon you get the Cardinals versus the Braves, and tonight you get the Orioles against Texas. The brevity of the one-game is astounding in simplicity, and in my opinion it should be expanded.
Yes, those long-winded seven-game NLCS and ALCS are like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. They drag their feet and take us into a World Series that plods on into November. No offense to baseball, a game I truly love, but they are pushing deeper into the football season and I find it really distracting and annoying.
MLB should take note of how NFL playoffs work. You build up to one exciting game, you play it hard, and boom, you have a winner. The one-game Wild Card is a distant relative to this type of game, but it makes great sense to me to shorten other baseball playoff series. I guess I’m dreaming to have it come down to one game, but why not at least scale-back some of the other series?
We do not need a five-game NLDS and ALDS. We just don’t. Give us a one-game, winner-take-all thing just like the Wild Card game. Scale the NLCS and ALCS back to a best of five games series, and then go with your best of seven World Series. To me it makes the most sense for the players, for the fans, and for baseball.
These days we get to the World Series, and all the other playoff games that precede it seem to take the wind out of its sails. I always watch, even if my beloved Mets are not involved (which has been the case going on 12 years now), but lately I have lost interest. The lengthy playoffs test even the best fans of other teams. Yes, you’ll watch your own team, but you just cannot invest all that time in the other teams—at least I cannot.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
I like the one game wild card because it returns the importance of winning a division.