And, FWIW, I'm all in. It's too early to scrap the year. Even without fans in the stands, baseball could offer a great escape to millions of quarantine shut-ins, and we'll need a diversion from the looming pain and insanity. I'm not sure it's logistically doable, keeping 25-man rosters healthy. But in the spirit of Jim Abbott, it's worth a try.
One caveat, though: Let's not kid ourselves. The adage - "Never let a crisis go to waste" will be invoked. Proposed changes won't necessarily stay temporary, and I'm going to show you why. The new model represents a huge chance for MLB to build a more profitable system. Traditionalists won't like it, but restructured divisions will make a lot more money.
Supposedly, MLB plans three 10-team leagues - based on regions - and a lengthy post-season. By my count, the new alignment would instantly add 14 rivalries to the regular season. That's the most lucrative change since the expanded playoffs. Add the savings from reduced travel schedules, and it's a huge advantage. Old-timers will shudder, but the changes are coming. Consider the new system:
MLB East: Yankees, Mets, Redsocks, Nats, Orioles, Phillies, Pirates, Blue Jays, Rays, Marlins.
Along with reduced travel costs, this leaves the Yankees with at least five instinctive rivalries: Boston and Baltimore, (traditions), the Rays and Mets (territorials) and the Phillies (via Joe Girardi and Didi Gregorius, plus they'll quickly hate us; they hate everybody.)
Overall, this adds five new regular-season rivalries: O's-Nats, Yanks-Phillies, Yanks-Mets, Mets-Redsocks, and Rays-Marlins. The only lost rivalry: The burgeoning Yankees-Astros hate-fest. That's for the post-season, I guess.
MLB Cental: Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Cardinals, Royals, Reds, Indians, Twins, Braves, Tigers.
This adds four rivalries: Cubs-Chisox, Reds-Indians, Twins-Brewers, Royals-Cards, though it leaves Atlanta relatively alone, without a natural punching bag. Would Toronto be better off in the Central, and the Braves in NL East?
MLB West: Dodgers, Angels, Giants, A's, Padres, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Rangers, Astros, Mariners.
Five new rivalries: Dodgers-Angels, Giants-A's, Dodgers-A's, Giants-Angels, and Astros-Dodgers, based on the cheating scandal. Am I leaving out the Brewers-Twins?
I count 14 new rivalries, plus a Wild Card system that would more resemble March Madness than playoffs. The DH will become league-wide, ending the ridiculous home park set of rules that has been in effect for decades.
You might read this and shudder. It has upsides and downsides, and there is a new reality to the need for change. But let's not kid ourselves:
There will be no going back. This is a crisis, and for better or worse, the owners will use it to make changes. Whatever happens, it will be here to stay. Just sayin.'
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5 comments:
I don't mind the realignment, but the endless playoffs are terrible. Congratulations, we are now the NBA. The regular season is meaningless.
I agree: Toronto should be in the Central, where they would be a natural rival with Detroit. Wonder why not.
But yes, I love the old leagues, and would like to hang on to them.
Also, it seems to me that Wild Cards are the original sin, much as they keep more teams in the race. The great thing to me is having to finish first in the long season, the best challenge in sports...
...But like pretty much everything else in American sports, culture, politics, and quality of life today, we're fighting a rearguard action, just hope that things don't get completely unbearable before we die. Which could be any minute now.
Everything is a desperate compromise: "Okay, okay, so there's not post office. Just leave us the democracy. Please?"
Same thing with baseball. MLB, that constantly imitative entity, which is always seeking to emulate other sports but which adamantly refuses to do anything like cut the average time of a game down to a tidy three hours or so, signaled this when they got rid of the league president offices. And started calling themselves, "MLB," just the sort of impersonal, mindless corporate rebranding that investors love.
"Okay, okay, so the old leagues are gone. Just don't put ads on the field and the bases, okay? No? Well, just don't put them on the uniforms, like those stupid European soccers teams. No? Well, just don't start putting the corporate names into the tea names, like they do in Japan, all right? No?..."
Sigh.
I may be mistaken on this, but in some American media I was reading or watching I read that one of the many, many conditions would be that teams would be limited to 14 players per any one game. Yee ha!
There were also squabbles between teams and players about money (what else) and what the fuck to do if one guy - a catcher, a bat boy, a pitching coach, a groundskeeper, a cameraman - tests positive for and/or is diagnosed with COVID-19. I predict total panic.
I had actually kind of forgotten about baseball for a while but stumbled across my autographed Yankee ball today (hidden in its little case behind some papers on my desk). I really do miss it, but I am really not very optimistic that what - if anything - is cobbled together will be remotely exciting and/or entertaining.
The closest I come to sports these days is playing football with Sam (my rather large and rowdy cat). It's fun and we both get our heart rates going (Sam is losing weight, which is good; I am not, which is not good), but it's taking its toll on the oriental carpets.
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