Date: Fri 06-Oct-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Harmon-Column-Baseball

Full Text:

Kim Harmon/On Sports

Wild Card Is Wild

Don Mattingly had it right when he said, " If you don't think this is pennant

baseball then you don't know what the (expletive deleted) you're talking

about. "

The Yankees were on the verge of winning a wild card berth into the 1995

American League playoffs, the first aberration in the so-called purity pool of

baseball since the 1981 split-season playoff format, when a reporter asked the

Yankee captain if champagne can still be sipped after winning a wild card

rather than a division title.

Nobody seems to understand what this is all about, that this is the best thing

the sport could have done for itself and the smartest thing the owners (even

if it is all because of money) did since . . . since . . .  well, since ever.

A wild-card format keeps another seven or eight teams in the mix until the

last week of the season.

It's as simple as that.

I love the wild card format and not just because the Yankees squeaked in. It

has a lot to do with the fact that had this been a normal format, with two

divisions in each league, then the best and the fourth- best teams in each

league (Cleveland-Seattle and Atlanta-Chicago) would have made the playoffs,

shutting out two teams that were better than Seattle and two teams that were

better than the Cubs.

If it wasn't for this wild card format, then Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Los

Angeles and Colorado would have been lining up their off-season tee times long

before now. Houston, Chicago, Kansas City and Texas would have been out of it

in early August instead of late September.

And I had an argument about it all Sunday, let me tell you, and if Red Sox

fans are all like this other guy then I'm not going to root for the Sox if

it's them, and not the Yanks, who make the World Series.

This Red Sox fan was willing to accept the accomplishment of winning a

division title but denigrated the Yankees for sneaking into the playoffs

through the hated wild card.

Okay, fine, the Red Sox won a division. They deserve a spot in the playoffs.

But if it wasn't for the three-division format, which led to the wild card,

then the Red Sox never would have made the playoffs.

It would have been the Indians.

The Red Sox would have finished in second by 13 games and, sure, the Yankees

would have finished third, 20 games out, but both the Sox and the Yanks still

would have finished the season with a better record than the Mariners.

I don't see how you can't like this system, if the top four teams in each

league are in the playoffs instead of the best and the fourth-best.

Where would the justice have been in the Cubs and Mariners making the playoffs

and all those other teams not? Where was the justice, a couple years ago, in

sending the San Francisco Giants home with 101 victories, one fewer than the

Atlanta Braves managed, even though the Giants had won a dozen more games than

the Phillies?

And like Don Mattingly also said, it doesn't matter how you got there and as

long as you got there. And if the Yankees or the Rockies win the World Series,

you won't care that they were wild card teams.

They will be champions.

It's still new and a little bit distasteful to some (even I admit that there

are problems, especially with scheduling and things like that), but any system

that keeps more teams in the chase until the end (and, thus, generates more

interest into October) is a good thing.

A real good thing.