With the Atlanta Braves’ loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in Major League Baseball’s first ever second wild card, one game
playoff round (or whatever it is the baseball think tank has titled it) leaving a “damp, drizzly November” in my baseball soul, I found it high time to get to baseball- pontificating as soon as I could.

After his epic, arduous search, Captain Ahab battled Moby-Dick for three days before a victor was decided. And while I pander to the pallets of those literary scholars among us, I cannot help but think how much the 2012 Major League Baseball season has been cheapened by essentially deciding a plight of similar proportions through a one game playoff round. Through the epic battles with nature, the demise of many comrades, the moments
of great triumph, and the ponderous pauses in between, the marathon that is the Major League Baseball season, and the journey that was the Pequod’s in Melville’s masterpiece are not all that dissimilar, and certainly the magnanimity of neither should be cheapened with the notion that all can be decided in three hours, rather than at least three days.

Okay, is that enough of the literary parallels for now… I guess so. So let us close our paperbacks for now, and open the baseball bible. Baseball is a unique sport, in that its entire 162 game regular season is played out in series of almost always three games or four. The game is designed that way largely due to pitching. A pitcher is, quite arguably, the one position is all of sports that could have the greatest single impact on the outcome of a contest, and in baseball, that starting pitcher is different every game. Therefore, teams most often compete against each other in series of three games– the team with the most depth in starting pitching theoretically being the team that should triumph over the course of most of those series. Then, when
the stakes are raised and teams have earned their way through the 162 game marathon and into the post season, those series become five and seven games, magnifying their significance and capping off that epic summer journey in a true test of skills, strength, and depth.

But wait – not so in Major League Baseball’s latest attempt to garner a few extra dollars and taint the purity of the uniqueness of the baseball “series.”  I cannot believe I am saying this, amidst a lifelong love affair with my Phillies, but – yes- the Atlanta Braves have been unjustifiably tomahawk chopped.  After a 94 win season (and for those unaccustomed to baseball numerology, 94 wins is a near herculean effort in the MLB) and a commanding wild card lead through much of it, despite finishing six games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals, the Braves triumph of a season ended after just 9 innings, culminating an epic journey of over 1,458 innings that got them there.  This season, in their latest “fix what isn’t broke” venture, Major League Baseball added a second wild card team to each league, leading to a one game playoff between the top wild card winner and the second place wild card winner. I will admit to having a countdown on the board in my classroom as the Phillies inched to within three games of that second wild card spot, and I will certainly admit to being inextricably woven to the Phillies’ every move during what was seemingly becoming an improbable late season resurrection from the baseball graveyard, but that was the rabid fan in me, not the baseball pragmatist. And when it comes to deciding how a season will play out and how a champion will be decided, it should be, for the purity and duration of the sport,  baseball pragmatism that wins out, not artificially engendered late season excitement.

Football is played once a week, with essentially the same starting lineups out there each week, and so it only makes sense that a football playoff is single elimination, one game per week just like the regular season. For baseball, the entire season is played as one series after another, with teams rarely off more than one day in a week; to subvert that and suddenly have one single elimination playoff game determine a team’s fate absolutely blemishes the purity of the professional baseball season and its structure. If it’s more playoff teams that Major League Baseball wants, fine – add another series into the playoffs, or shorten the regular season by a week so more time can be devoted to postseason play. Of course, that will do little to increase revenue, and let’s face it – what is this one game elimination playoff round really about besides pecuniary procurement after all.

As the debris flew from the Braves fans in the midst of a controversial infield fly call late in their one game playoff with the victorious Cardinals, the real travesty got lost in the quagmire of that inning. The real travesty is that a 94 win team who finished a strong six games ahead in the top wild card spot watched its season end in one game, while the MLB fat cats sat in their comfortable luxury seats and likely continued to muse over how great this all is for baseball.

I fully admit to being a bit chary when it comes to accepting change, especially when it is change that alters long standing consistency, and so I was a bit reluctant to embrace the original addition of a wild card team into the Major League Baseball playoffs back in 1994 when I was much younger and knew much less about, well,  everything from Moby-Dick to the business of pro sports. In hindsight though, Major League Baseball must be commended for the addition of the original wild card because they did it the right way. They maintained that Hemingwayesque purity of the sport by structuring the playoffs with the addition of another playoff series. This time around, however, as I sit back with 18 more years of intellect stored up, I cannot help but look upon this new wild card format with disgust at what it has done to cheapen the uniqueness of the baseball season.

Hooray for the Oakland A’s, major league baseball’s little engine that still can, for using the entire 162 game marathon to catapult over the Texas Rangers on baseball’s final regular season date. Bravo to the long forgotten now suddenly Cinderella Baltimore Orioles who are doing everything they can to slip on that glass slipper that they reached for throughout the 162 game season that saw them in contention every magical step of the way. The Orioles, the A’s, the tenacious Tigers of Detroit led by baseball’s first Triple Crown winner since 1967, the Yankee empire, the young and ravenous Washington Nationals, and the newest Big Red machine in Cincinnati are all palpable proofs that Major League Baseball is epically exciting without fabricating the excitement of an unjustifiable one game playoff.

Infield fly rules aside, it would seem only proper for Major League Baseball to reevaluate this new playoff system. Yes, upon the grand stage of life, there are bigger battles to fight, but for those of us who maintain our allegiance to America’s pastime, it is difficult to merely sit back as an audience member and watch a tragedy unfold on the stage of professional baseball. So before I go back to prepping my notes on page 528 of Moby-Dick, I will spend a few more moments shaking my head and wondering why we are trying so hard to complicate a sport so pure and so unique.