THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508300701
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Major League Baseball hopes its wildcard races will take back September from the NFL.
Right. And any day now, Jimmy Johnson is going to make an appointment with John Daly's barber.
To argue that fans will soon be atwitter over the new baseball playoff format is to underestimate the pulling power of professional football.
Baseball purists hate the new playoffs, of course. But so should anybody else who notices that most of the wildcard field is made up footwipes masquerading as contenders.
Going into Tuesday's games, only six of the 15 teams in serious contention for wildcard slots had won more than they had lost.
Break-even baseball does not usually excite the unwashed. Baseball wants to change that. It hopes interest in the wildcards eventually will be reflected at the gate and through TV ratings.
So far, there is not enough evidence to support such optimism. National ratings for ABC's ``Baseball Night in America'' suggest that people prefer watching the winningest teams - Cleveland, Atlanta and Boston.
There is no way of knowing how many people casually monitor the wildcard races through newspapers and television without actually making the investment of time and money it takes to watch the games.
Perhaps genuine excitement will still build over the wildcard in Seattle, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Houston, New York and San Diego. Then, again, the NFL owns most of baseball's wildcard cities.
Obviously, baseball felt it had to try gimmickry in an effort to fight the losing battle against pro football. Even so, the concept of the wildcard misses the point.
Wildcard or no wildcard, pennant races or no pennant races, football has a stronger hold on the public than baseball. The NFL is considered a superior spectacle by both fans and gamblers, often one and the same.
A couple weeks ago, John Madden and Pat Summerall were on before another of those turgid NFL exhibitions when they fell into reverie about the exploding popularity of pro football.
Both proclaimed that they had never experienced so much anticipation for an NFL season. It should be, they agreed, the most exciting year ever.
Well, now. If this propaganda sounds as if it came directly from the NFL public relations office, that's because it did. Hype aside, the NFL should be as predictable as usual, with more mediocre teams than ever. And don't even mention the Super Bowl. Or Stupor Bowl.
Reality, though, rarely interferes with the NFL's self-promotion. It doesn't dare. Pro football's product, flawed as it is, remains too popular to criticize.
What baseball wouldn't pay for a little of the NFL's rising self-confidence. If only post-strike baseball didn't have to grovel for approval.
An envy of football is driving the wildcard system, which has proven so profitable to the NFL. But what if, in a best-of-five series, a clearly inferior wildcard team upends a division champion that has proven itself superior over a 144-game season?
It could easily happen in a sport where one pitcher can be the key. If it does, baseball will deserve the bashing it gets.
This is the risk baseball takes in order to put on a race that is a derby for nags. It's a September stampede of mediocrity that kicks up more dust than excitement. by CNB