THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 14, 1995 TAG: 9510140017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Major-league baseball has given professionalism a bad name as it stumbles from one amateurish error to another.
In 1994, one of the most exciting seasons in memory was cut short as the greed and folly of owners and players alike degenerated into a strike that meant no playoffs, no World Series.
This season will put another asterisk in the record books since it too was shortened by the strike. Fans, disgusted by this ill-treatment, stayed away from ball parks in droves despite nifty new stadiums and interesting pennant races.
And speaking of pennant races, the sport has tinkered with tradition by designing post-season play with new levels of playoffs and wild-card teams. Purists are outraged, but even if you accept the idea the execution has been lame.
Here's a post season that features old favorites like the Yankees and Reds, the perennially snakebit Red Sox, the regularly contending Braves, and two new additions to the chase in the Rockies and Mariners. To top it off, there's the fabulous Cinderella story of the Cleveland Indians with the best record in baseball and a chance to win a World Series berth for the first time since 1954.
So what does baseball do with this golden opportunity to return to respectability? It makes lemonade into lemons, of course. The pairing of post-season teams is baffling since wild cards logically ought to have been expected to play the best team in their division. Next, the better teams ought to get rewarded for it with home-field advantage. Instead, the Indians, for example, have to play two at home and three away.
Finally, the TV arrangements are completely fouled up. In an era when 500-channel TV is being hyped, all games are available on only one channel at a time. Even then, simple greed would suggest milking the games for all they're worth. And if baseball has shown itself to have mastered anything, it's greed. But in this instance, it even fails at that.
Instead of scheduling all games at different times so fans could see every moment of every contest (and be exposed to four times as many commercials), every game was played simultaneously so fans could watch only one out of four. It isn't as if baseball had to invent the wheel. Basketball and football have plenty of playoff games every year and aren't so stupid as to offer fans only 25 percent of the action when they're itching to sit through 100 percent.
Leave it to baseball to choke in the bottom of the ninth when the bases are loaded. Yes, somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy on TV; playoff baseball has struck out. by CNB