We live in a country of excess: More is more might as well be our national mantra. “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” has been replaced with “What can I get for free and Look how much I saved!”
I don’t know when this became the case but I don’t see how you can argue this fact any longer. It has crept into our very essence of our being, whether it is with larger cargo room in our cars to how many more pieces of chicken we can get if we order the Super Jumbo Meal with the bucket of Mashed Potatoes and an IV of Mountain Dew. It is what we are about as Americans and it is not going to change anytime soon.
With all of that being said, I have come to realize there is no stopping it so I might as well embrace it. To get prepared to write this article I’ll go grab a roll of paper towel from my 96 roll package that I picked up yesterday after work because honestly, I might not get a chance to go back to the store until next year. I will put my four (okay six) chocolate chip cookies down on it from the box of 48 and I will pour myself a huge glass of pop from one of the ten 2 liters I bought at the store yesterday.
Now that I am ready to write this thing, it’s time to put this analogy to the test. Take sports for example, a major culprit in the more is mooring (I don’t think this is a word but for now I’m going to go with it) of America. I’m not even going to get into the salary issue because it’s been done to death. The expansion of the four major sports over the last twenty years or so has been a major source of contention with me as well, but at this stage in the game, it’s pointless to even discuss. The thing that has driven me crazy (and still does) is the fact that making the playoffs has become an after thought in the majority of the leagues.
I mean seriously, when a Detroit Pistons team can end up five games under five hundred and still make the “Post-Season”, what exactly does making the playoffs truly mean? The same can be said about Hockey (or as I like to call it, that league that takes a year off every couple of years). The Detroit Red Wings haven’t missed the playoffs since 1895 (sarcasm of course). Which is very impressive but it might be even more impressive if over half the teams in the league didn’t also make them as well. The NFL makes it a little more difficult but with the talent level of the league at an all time low, even a 7-9 Seattle Seahawks team can win their division, like they did two years ago. Heck, they even won a playoff game against the defending champions.
That leaves us naturally with Major League Baseball, the one sport to save us from the excess filled national obsession. The reason I have always loved baseball (past the obvious reasons that is) is the way that they have always handled their post-season. When you make the playoffs in baseball it actually means something. There is no skating into the playoffs because you happen to not be as terrible as the team in third place, it’s because you actually deserve to be there. Three division winners and one wild card team, eight out of thirty teams. That’s a 27% chance of making the post-season, unlike the 53% chance that the NBA and the NHL has in place.
Just over a quarter percent chance means a hell of a lot more then say over 50%. With fifty percent you might as well just flip a coin to wage your teams chances, regardless of their play (unless of course you’re an Islanders fan, then I’d say it’s closer to the baseball percentage). Which of course brings me to my point. As everyone surely knows by now, Major League Baseball has added a second wild card team into the fray this season. A second team to cause havoc on an otherwise perfect system. Now I understand that there are fans of this addition and people who think it is one more way for them to squeeze another game out of the already ridiculously long season.
I think it is obvious what side of the fence I am standing on, a side that favors great play versus who’s hot right now. Which when it comes down to it, is all this addition brings to the game. In the National League right now the Atlanta Braves sit five games (as of Saturday) above the St. Louis Cardinals for the first wild card spot. Atlanta is a far better team this year then the Cardinals and yet, when it all comes down to it, it won’t really matter much at all. If they end up both being “wild-card” teams, they will have to play a single game playoff, essentially a play in game, that will decide who really goes to the playoffs. This, in my opinion of course, is entirely unfair to the Braves who deserve to be there, opposed to the Cardinals (or the Brewers, Phillies or Dodgers) who have barely been able to stay over five hundred all season. This new addition is not about who should be in the post-season, it is all about how many more teams they can fit under the “Playoff team” moniker that is quickly being tarnished.
If this addition actually added something to the spirit of the game or the competition, like the original wildcard did back in 94’, then I would be all for it. Unfortunately that is not the case this time. Instead we will have added nothing but lowered expectations to the sport, continuing the downward slop of what “More is more” is all about. Which as everyone knows, means “more and more” of the mediocre, because greatness doesn’t change in its amounts, just our definition of what it means does.
