Parody.

 

At the conclusion of last night's snorefest, one of the MLB apologists in the booth solemnly congratulated the cartel on its "parity." Right. Well, he had the name almost right.

The announcers went on to kvell over how it was that Arizona had lost 110 games and Texas, 102 games, just two seasons ago, and bounced right back.

Whoop-dee-do.

This is, as usual, baseball applying the wrong lessons from other professional sports to its own, pathetic self. Parity? The Snakes finished 16 games out of first in their division, and 20 behind the best team in the league, the Atlanta Braves. Texas finished "tied" for first in the AL West, but 11 games behind the best team in its league, the Orioles.

This isn't parity, this is the fat kid at the picnic who fell on his face in the potato race, getting a do-over.

Parity?

Over the past 63 seasons, baseball has added 14 expansion teams, or nearly half of the total that exist. Of those 14, only 1—Houston—has, barely, a winning all-time record. 

Parity? All baseball did—to accommodate this sort of runaway ineptitude—was to make the Long Season, six months of daily games, meaningless. Belay that—MLB also wrecked its own playoffs.

I was looking forward to a tough NLCS between the dynamic Braves and the Bums, the best team in baseball, all told, over the past 5-6 years. No could do. Did you want to see this intriguing young Orioles team in the Series? You're out of luck.

Instead, you're getting the 4th best team in the AL vs. the 6th best team in the NL. Enjoy!

Think of what this might have meant in the past. Under today's rules, legends of the falls such as the 1955 Series might just as easily have been between...the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. 1978? Try maybe the Angels against the Padres.

Let's face it: they've taken the "Classic" out of "Fall Classic." 

And it's not just the World Series that has been so degraded. Pennant races—real pennant races—barely even exist. Speaking of 1978, want a race—and a one-game, veins-in-your-head-popping showdown at the end—like the one that year between the Yankees and the Sox? Well, you're not gonna get it. Texas and Houston finished tied for first this year, and instead of a one-game playoff for all the marbles...Houston was declared the winner, on the basis of having won the season series, or more first downs or something.

I know, I know: just how much meaning can we expect in a world where major soccer championships, with billions watching, are decided by the idiocy of penalty kicks?  

But baseball—the greatest game ever invented, our game—was supposed to be above all that. Wasn't it? Wasn't the whole point of all those games over all those days—besides getting to drink beer in the sun—about determining who the TRUE champions were?  

Just when did we start devaluing sustained excellence? The fact that teams can bounce back from 100-plus losses to the Series in just two years doesn't indicate "parity" in any sense of the word. It just means that MLB has figured out enough handicaps, booster seats, and gutter rails to take any real meaning out of a "championship." To make it all...a crapshoot.

Baseball has degraded itself to the point where it might as well be hockey, with the main purpose being that people in distant, ghastly outposts like Edmonton or Tampa never have to acknowledge that their team is really out of it. 

Instead of the World Series trophy, they should give everybody a participation medal.