ELItorial

The worst idea since the strike

COURTESY CNNSI.COM Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's realignment plan will hurt more than it helps.

By late September 1998, three baseball teams were jockeying frantically for the last National League (NL) playoff spot. Every game counted in the all-important win column, and after 161 games, all three were within a single game of one another. At the end of the regular season, two remained tied for the lead and were forced into a winner-take-all tiebreaker game. This was not an example of an extremely interesting pennant race—these were not the Yankees and the Red Sox vying for the crown of the American League (AL) East. The two teams playing their 163rd game were the Cubs and the Giants, two teams in different divisions that were competing not for a pennant, but for the Wild Card. If Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Bud Selig has his way on Tues., Apr. 18, exciting races like this will truly be a thing of the past.

When the 30 MLB owners meet in Houston, the realignment of leagues and divisions will be at the top of their agenda. Selig, whose daughter owns the Brewers, will present his realignment plan to the owners, delighting a few and alienating several others. Under the plan, the Diamondbacks and the Devil Rays would switch leagues, much to the chagrin of Arizona, which has proven very successful in the NL. The NL would contain four divisions of four teams each, eliminating the Wild Card from the playoff picture. Even though the AL would keep its three divisions, there would now be two divisions of four teams each, and one of six teams.

To casual baseball fans, this realignment might seem minor, a slight adjustment that would not have a tangible effect on the game. On the contrary, Selig's crackpot plan will send baseball spiraling back down the pit it dug itself into during the '94 strike. The key to increasing baseball's popularity is keeping fans' interest alive late in the season and maintaining key regional rivalries. Realignment will eliminate much of baseball's appeal in September and create small, lackluster divisions that send mediocre teams to the playoffs.

With the NL Wild Card gone, Selig plans to reinstitute unbalanced schedules to both leagues, in which teams would play many more games within their division, especially during the home stretch. Instead of creating more exciting pennant races, the new schedules will just help good teams rack up artificially high records and force weaker divisions to crown a champion that barely has a .500 win percentage.

Four-team divisions are simply too small to sustain interesting title races—fans would be left to choose between a "dramatic" three-game series between the Reds and the Devil Rays and the mortal rivalry between the Pirates and the Expos. Creating four divisions of four teams apiece is crazy enough. Shifting the AL divisions to create a 6-4-4 balance is truly insane. Selig claims that this is just the result of following through on a long-standing promise to move the Rangers into the AL Central so that they can play more games in their own time zone. But at the same time, Selig ignores Cleveland and Detroit, who also play in the AL Central which, similarly, are forced to play high numbers of games outside of their home time zone. Clearly, this is just another of Selig's explanations that holds no water.

One of the few things that has sustained baseball over the years is the undying ability of fans to hold grudges. Year after year, Dodgers fans will hate the Giants, Cardinals fans will turn up their noses at the Cubs, and Mets fans are certainly not going to develop a liking for the Braves. If Selig's realignment plan is enacted, most of these rivalries will disappear into the great baseball beyond. The Mets would move into the newly-formed Northeast division, while the Braves would grace the Southeast. Even now, only two weeks before the plan is to be voted on, it is not clear whether the Cardinals will remain in the Cubs' division. Outcry at the possibility of a change prompted Selig to disavow moving the Cards, yet only a week ago the plans still reflected the end of that rivalry. Rivalries take decades to build. It would be a shame for some of the best to be destroyed by one man's need to change the face of baseball.

Baseball has always feared change. After the 1994 partial-realignment and the institution of the Wild Card, pundits predicted the death of baseball. But for once the gamble paid off, and the Wild Card has produced some of the best races of the past few seasons. In 1998, the same year fans of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco all gathered breathlessly around their televisions, the pennant races were, in a word, boring. The Braves won the NL East by 18 games; the Yankees finished up 22. The ratings for the tiebreaker game between the Cubs and the Giants were sky-high. This was more than a simple game—it was the essence of pure baseball, the kind of baseball that will disappear if realignment plays musical chairs with America's game.

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