Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Wild Cards
Ahh the Brewers, we can’t believe it, September is right around the corner and the franchise has slipped under .500 for the first time since April, what surprise. Hey and here’s another, Ben Sheets has spent the last six weeks on this disabled list. No way. All right, way. The Clarion was saying months ago the Brewers were going to gag away their lead. We’re biased, we can’t stand used car salesman Bud Selig or the daughter he bequeathed the team to, we have no beef with Milwaukeeans. We abhor Selig for what happened to baseball under his regime.
The problem the Brewers imminent collapse points out is the Wild Card. At the Clarion, we keep trying to get excited about the Wild Card race. Everyone keeps telling us about the great races in both leagues. We keep trying to inure ourselves to the mediocrity, to pretend that a race between the one under .500 Brew crew, the three over .500 Cubbies and last year’s pretenders, the .500 on the button St. Louis Cardinals is real race. Their competitive, their competitive. Just click your cleats together three times and they’ll look like contenders, Toto. But there are no fairy godmothers to make it so. It isn’t exactly the 104 win Braves holding off the 103 win Giants in 1993 to win the N.L. West. Heck, the Reds, at 60 and 72, are sort of still in it, more so in the N.L. Central than the Wild Card, but with four playoff teams per league, up from 70+ years of one per, and another nearly 30 years of two per league, now almost everybody is still in it.
The Selig supporters want us to shout hooray for parity. But its hard. They have attempted to copy Pete Rozelle and the NFL. Having seen football shoot by them in popularity in the last thirty odd years, baseball’s owners cajoled by Selig, opened up the playoffs, and devalued one of their greatest assets, the regular season, shooting for parity. It was analgous to the era of the faux home run records, changing the substance and underlying values of the game to allow for a slow pitch softball like numbers didn’t work, provoking initial excitement but eventually a greater backlash. And so it will go for the expanded playoffs and parity. Diluting the competition is never a draw. It has made for fluke champions of the most watered down sort.
Everybody is in the race the supporters retort. There are a bunch of proponents right now, the Clarion is still in the minority on this position. MLB is drawing well, setting attendance records. (Right now...) Looking at the crowd figures last night for N.L. Wild Card contenders...
In indifferent Florida, only the road team was in the race and the Braves at Florida had the stadium 32% full with 11,500 people.
In the battle for the N.L. Central, The Cubbies sold out for the Brew crew with nearly 41,000 in Wrigley.
However, the fight for best in the West drew only 23,000 a paltry 54% capacity in San Diego. Where there are definitely other things to do.
With the home ruin chase over and only visiting San Diego in the race, the San Francisco Giants announced an optimistic 37,800+ tickets sold.
The Mets and the Phils did a legitamate 40k+ at Citizen’s Bank Park, even if the Phils are fading, lots of Mets fans made the drive down the Turnpike.
They sold almost 50,000 tickets to Chavez Ravine in LA for the contending Dodgers...
Will the Wild Card race hold fans spellbound or will it fizzle into another season capped by an 83 win World Series Champion, propelled to victory by the errors and gaffes of their equal medicore opponents.
The problem the Brewers imminent collapse points out is the Wild Card. At the Clarion, we keep trying to get excited about the Wild Card race. Everyone keeps telling us about the great races in both leagues. We keep trying to inure ourselves to the mediocrity, to pretend that a race between the one under .500 Brew crew, the three over .500 Cubbies and last year’s pretenders, the .500 on the button St. Louis Cardinals is real race. Their competitive, their competitive. Just click your cleats together three times and they’ll look like contenders, Toto. But there are no fairy godmothers to make it so. It isn’t exactly the 104 win Braves holding off the 103 win Giants in 1993 to win the N.L. West. Heck, the Reds, at 60 and 72, are sort of still in it, more so in the N.L. Central than the Wild Card, but with four playoff teams per league, up from 70+ years of one per, and another nearly 30 years of two per league, now almost everybody is still in it.
The Selig supporters want us to shout hooray for parity. But its hard. They have attempted to copy Pete Rozelle and the NFL. Having seen football shoot by them in popularity in the last thirty odd years, baseball’s owners cajoled by Selig, opened up the playoffs, and devalued one of their greatest assets, the regular season, shooting for parity. It was analgous to the era of the faux home run records, changing the substance and underlying values of the game to allow for a slow pitch softball like numbers didn’t work, provoking initial excitement but eventually a greater backlash. And so it will go for the expanded playoffs and parity. Diluting the competition is never a draw. It has made for fluke champions of the most watered down sort.
Everybody is in the race the supporters retort. There are a bunch of proponents right now, the Clarion is still in the minority on this position. MLB is drawing well, setting attendance records. (Right now...) Looking at the crowd figures last night for N.L. Wild Card contenders...
In indifferent Florida, only the road team was in the race and the Braves at Florida had the stadium 32% full with 11,500 people.
In the battle for the N.L. Central, The Cubbies sold out for the Brew crew with nearly 41,000 in Wrigley.
However, the fight for best in the West drew only 23,000 a paltry 54% capacity in San Diego. Where there are definitely other things to do.
With the home ruin chase over and only visiting San Diego in the race, the San Francisco Giants announced an optimistic 37,800+ tickets sold.
The Mets and the Phils did a legitamate 40k+ at Citizen’s Bank Park, even if the Phils are fading, lots of Mets fans made the drive down the Turnpike.
They sold almost 50,000 tickets to Chavez Ravine in LA for the contending Dodgers...
Will the Wild Card race hold fans spellbound or will it fizzle into another season capped by an 83 win World Series Champion, propelled to victory by the errors and gaffes of their equal medicore opponents.
Comments:
Post a Comment
