Baseball Playoffs and Americanism

In 1954, French-born historian Jacques Barzun wrote, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” Baseball, once regarded as our nation’s pastime, has always been a representation of American culture and the values of hard work and opportunity for mobility. As a result of the steroid era, however, baseball has lost some of its integrity, and it no longer seems to represent the true American spirit of equality and meritocracy that it did in the past. The 2012 baseball season is under way, along with a brand new playoff format waiting in October. Rather than have one wild card in each league go straight to the first round best-of-five-game series, each league will now have two wild cards that will face each other in a one game playoff to determine which team advances to face off the division winners in a five game series. Does this new format help restore fairness, opportunity, and integrity to the game of baseball?
Fresh off of one of the most exciting finishes ever in the regular season, Major League Baseball simply could not restrain itself from having a similar finish to every season. Unlike teams in the NFL, NHL, or NBA, baseball teams play an extraordinary amount of regular season games in a season—162. Why such a long season? Unlike other sports, the outcome of a single baseball game can be mostly due to chance, which is why teams in the same league play each other at least 6 times and up to 19 times in the regular season. Since the overall talent of a single team is not fully exposed in a single game, one game would be too small of a sample size to determine any sort of true superiority. Thus, a 162 game regular season is without a doubt enough games to determine which teams are better than others. The rationale for the long season makes the one game playoff incomprehensible.
This irrational new one game playoff is extremely unfair to the truly better wild-card team.  Suppose for example that one wild card team is the second best team in the entire league, just behind their division leader, while the second wild-card team is far behind all of the other division leaders. In a one game playoff, both teams have about an equal chance of winning, despite one team proving their superiority over the course of a 162 game season. If this system had been in place last year, there is a 50% chance that the World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals would have been eliminated in the first round one game playoff. Clearly, this does not exemplify the traditional American virtue of reward for hard work.
There have long been arguments in favor of adding additional wild card teams in order to appease teams in powerhouse divisions, such as the AL East. In the past, sometimes the third place team in a strong division will have a better record than some other division winners. While it makes sense to give teams in this situation a playoff opportunity, a one game playoff is not the answer. Equal opportunity is critical but only if it is fair. It would be more effective to eliminate divisions altogether, and simply have the four best teams in each league make the playoffs. Or, at least have the two wild cards play a three or five game series, like the other playoff teams.
What made the conclusion of the 2011 regular so exciting was not simply the fact that several teams’ fates rested on a single game. What made it special was that this fateful single game was game 162 of the regular season, not game 1 of the playoffs. A few years ago, Barzun said, “I’ve gotten so disgusted with baseball, I don’t follow it anymore. I just see the headlines and turn my head in shame from what we have done with our most interesting, best, and healthiest pastime.” Baseball’s new playoff format is sensationalistic and no longer meritocratic. Sadly, I don’t think this is much of a departure from current American culture. Baseball may not represent the America it used to represent, but it still reflects our culture today.  It has become a show, just like everything else.
 
Photo credit: Tom Thai