NFL and March Madness. The rest are mush. Why?
First weekend: wall-to-wall games; the "storylines" begin to be set
Then off days that build the tension and hype the stories.
Fewer games as you go along, but you're following the stories you're already invested in until the big finish.
Baseball: the off days kill the tension and lose the storylines because there are too many off days in the middle of series; and no "rhythm" to the ways the series build to a climax (of course, being single-elimination makes that a lot easier). If there days when the media get to re-set the storylines, it's more by accident than design.
By the time it's all done, you almost forget that they're still playing -- would you ever say that about NFL or March Madness? (Yeah, NBA and NHL are the same thing cubed, but I don't really care about them anyway).
I know it would never fly, but I'd rather see the college baseball approach where four teams go to one site and play a double-elimination pool over a long weekend -- wall-to-wall meaningful games, then a break to build the rhythm.
Adding more rounds of series with off-days would be more mush as far as I'm concerned. And, having it all happen during football season doesn't help. The NCAA fell into a goldmine becasue the 64-team bracket "clicked" with the fans and there's nothing else going on.
Geoff Baker with a reasoned article on Selig's proposal to go to 5, or 6, playoff teams per league.
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Q. Why does the media always gag when the playoffs are expanded? Baker excepted.
A. There was a time, of course, when the media gagged at the idea of the AL playing the NL in this cheesy World Series concept.
And, of course, for many years, "winning the pennant" was the only playoff there was. You won the most games in your league, you went to the "playoffs."
Second-place finishers? Why should they compete to see who's champion? They've already proved they're not the best team, correct?
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Am not sure why reporters call for cancellation of the playoffs any time a president is assassinated, an earthquake occurs, or a plane flies into a building. I know that they like to make statements that baseball doesn't matter, whenever they get the chance.
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One thing is, most writers were never jocks, and they have a weird view of what a Champion is.
Most on-TV interviews reflect a belief that a quarterback who has won a Super Bowl is a better human being than one who hasn't. They imagine that Scottie Pippen is a better human being than Charles Barkley or Karl Malone. They project a "Superman" mystique onto Champions.
I guess that the expansion of the playoffs rubs them the wrong way on the whole Superman-Champion syndrome. You only gotta be better than three teams to make the playoffs? Wow, what losers they're letting into the playoffs these days, we complain, as we sit at our desks digging into more hot dogs.
Needless to say, this flinch-reaction does not apply to Baker, who was a jock.
He referred to the 2004 playoffs when reasoning that expanded playoffs aren't all bad; if Geoff had been around Seattle in 1995, he might have thought of other examples :- )
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Am trying to be clear, as opposed to being snide. Maybe if I'd spent ten years in airports waiting for games that I didn't care about, I'd be baseball-fatigued, too. But I'd hope that I'd keep in mind that the game is for the fans, and not write all the time about how less baseball is better baseball.
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Q. Does SSI consider playoff expansion a "cash grab"?
A. When you reported to work this morning, was that a cash grab? Or was it a legitimate attempt to exchange goods and services?
Any business that is not trying to grow itself is derelict. That's America, and it's why we are the country in which plumbers drive Accords and pay $4 for lattes. We grow our businesses.
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Q. Is there a good case to be made against expansion?
A. Needless to say, not everybody who opposes playoff expansion does so for dubious reasons. There's a case to be made against. Sure there is.
We're talking about the mentality that complains when a game goes extra innings, that called for cancellation of the Bay Series, etc.
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Comments
Can't argue that at all. "Win or go home" is far more compelling than "win, lose, win, lose, lose, lose, okay now go home."
That said, I think you can build drama in those best-of series. Starting with shorter series makes the wildcard teams blow their better pitchers and not have enough time to re-set their rotations before the next round. But keeping the next round as a best-of-five favors the worse team. Best of seven, the better team SHOULD win. Best of five? It's easier to get lucky.
So you can keep some compelling storylines as they progress. Because the best of three could be done in three days you could keep some tension there as well.
I dunno - I'd rather have the buildup of the Divisional series while the wildcard is going on, and have that work like a Sweet 16. "The winner gets the right to play the well-rested Yankees, and have their fourth starter against CC Sabathia..."
It builds more david vs. goliath mystique, which is what's fun about March Madness. And you can get current storylines and pump upcoming storylines.
Baseball will never compete with the one-and-done juice of March Madness or the NFL playoffs, but they can do better.
~G
One of the problems with the baseball postseason is the winner of the short series and the stories that attend them languish while another series is still in progress. It amplifies the effect of the off days. If every series went the distance the off-days would just seem like a quick breather.
As an aside, even March Madness has caved to the demands for prime-time TV and the Final Four seems to drag compared to what it used to be. But through the Elite Eight the NCAA gets it right.
We asked at BJOL whether he'd heard anything about 2012, and he responded with surprise, "I thought it was a done deal? Oh, well, okay, I guess I dunno" or somesuch.
Then we come to find out that Bud Selig has also spoken of it as almost a done deal:
"I really believe we'll have the wild card for 2012, this year," Selig said Friday night in Chicago at a White Sox fan festival. "Clubs really want it. I don't think I've ever seen an issue that the clubs want more than to have the extra wild card this year.
"We're working on dates right now. That'll all take place. It looks to me like we'll have it because I've told everybody we have to have it. It'll be exciting. One-game playoff, it will start the playoffs in a very exciting manner," he said.
Another article gave MLB's deadline to decide as ... wait for it ... March 1.
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Assuming that the Rangers win the division, then if the M's have a Cinderella year, I'd much rather chase the WORST out of Boston / LAA than to have to beat BOTH of them.