The Triangle

Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: Jerry Lodriguss Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT Campus

As I write this, the Philadelphia Phillies prepare to play the New York Yankees on Halloween. They may well be playing past Election Day. There has never been a major league baseball game in November with the exception of 2001, when the 9/11 attacks interrupted the regular season schedule. God never meant for baseball to be played in November, or for that matter in the last weeks of October.

How did we come to such a pass?

Once upon a time there were eight teams in each league, none west of the Mississippi, where God never intended anything but minor league baseball to be played at any time of the year. The team that won the most games in its league faced its counterpart in the others. A 154-game schedule ensured that that the season would start and end in suitable weather. The Phillies and the Yankees played the 1950 World Series on Oct. 4, 5, 6, and 7, and went home, respectively, to lament and rejoice.

All this changed in 1957 when Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham defied God's ordinance and took the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants to California. Within four years, there were 10 teams in each league and a 162-game schedule that enabled Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth's single-season home run record (the first sign of divine retribution). Yankee-haters still fondly remember the 1966 season, when the Bombers finished tenth in the American League. By 1969 however, there were a dozen teams in each league. Since no one wanted to finish in twelfth place, the leagues were divided into divisions whose respective champions played each other for the pennant.

Forty years later we have 30 major league teams, 16 in the National League and 14 in the American. These are distributed into six divisions, with the American League West fielding all of four teams (despite which, the Texas Rangers can never win a title, perhaps a divine admonishment to the Lone Star State for its penchant for executing indigent defendants whose lawyers sleep through their trials). An infernal device known as the wild card, used in sports played when bears hibernate, has created a four-ring circus known as the postseason in which a best-of-five and a best-of-seven series must be hurdled to reach the Holy Grail of the World Series. By that time, unless the surviving gladiators are all from the Sunbelt-in which case, nobody will watch or care to see who wins-the Fall Classic will be played in weather God never meant it to be played in.

Continued...

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