Playoffs? We're Talking About Playoffs?

Written by Gene Zarnick

Wednesday, 07 October 2009

That's precisely what we're talking about Jim Mora, but not about all playoffs; just about the playoff game between the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins from yesterday. Now I know it's football season and everyone wants to go full speed ahead with continuous NFL banter, but remember that October is about baseball. NFL shines 365 days a year so let's give baseball a month when even a casual fan can find it entertaining. There was nothing that wasn't entertaining during yesterday's game that decided the AL Central Division title. The game lasted 4 hours and 37 minutes and I'm not complaining one bit. Everyone always complains about lengths of baseball games, and it's understood, but when the game is meaningful then we can throw the clock off the wall, because the excitement just builds further. So to anyone who missed this great game, the Minnesota Twins were down 0-3 then took the lead in the 7th 4-3. The Detroit Tigers tied it up in the 8th, took the lead by 1 in the 10th and the Twins tied it up and eventually scored the game winning run in the bottom of the 12th inning to give them their 17th win in the past 21 games, the AL Central Division title, and a trip to the playoffs to play the Yankees. That's what I call a meaningful game.

Minnesota Twins Homer Hankys

The major question now is how can baseball recreate this excitement year in and year out. It's rare that we have a one game playoff to decide the division or wild car. It's only happened nine times, including last year as well, when the Minnesota Twins were on the short end of the stick. Baseball needs this though; they need something that people gravitate towards to at the end of the season that either captures them for the rest of the playoffs or makes them care for a certain team. Anyone whose favorite team didn't make the playoffs and watched the game yesterday is going to be cheering for the Twins. The storylines are there; the amazing comeback, having the eventual MVP on their team, losing Justin Morneau, the incredible crowd, the Homer Hankys, and the fact that this is the last season in the Metrodome. Baseball has the drama, it just needs to provide an interesting way to get it out to the masses. So how does it do it?

Simple! Make a self-imposed playoff tiebreaker. Now my first though was to have the fourth and fifth place teams in each league play a one game playoff every year to decide who the fourth team in is, but then we'd have all the Red Sox fans crying, bitching, and whining about how they play in the toughest division and it's unfair to them to have a make or break game. Basically they'd all just act like a bunch of Tom Brady's so before I hand out the Kleenex I thought I'd change my approach. Here's what baseball should do. You take the 5th and 6th place team from each league and they have a one game playoff tiebreaker. The winner of that would then travel to the 4th place team, the usual wild card winner, and have to play them in a best of three series where every game is played at the 4th place team's stadium. Now this may seem unfair, but the 4th place team should get a major incentive over the other two and this would cut down on travel, plus provide extra excitement. So much drama and intrigue would be formulated over this maximum of four games between three teams. It creates the storylines baseball needs going into the postseason and allows sports fans to jump on board to a new aspect that baseball never had before. It gives you a reason to watch, a team to root for, or maybe even a team to root against. The problem with baseball is that anything that is simple that provides new excitement is deemed unfit for the game and the history of baseball. Maybe this time baseball will listen.