Not wild over the wild card
It may be a pretty close race, but it's not for first place
Posted: Monday July 20, 1998 01:46 PM
TAMPA, Florida (CNN/SI) -- It's late July, a time of the baseball season
when the division races ought to be heating up. Instead, we're stuck with
just one race -- the American League West -- and five blowouts.
And, of course, we have the wild card. Everyone around baseball is trying
to get into the wild-card race.
This isn't exactly baseball in its purest form, folks. You're not good
enough to win your division, but you're good enough to get into the
postseason as a wild card?
What the wild card does is allow a team that gets hot at the right time to
go a long way. You don't have to be the best team during the regular
season, or the best in your division. You don't even have to be one of the
top three teams.
All you have to be is good enough.
Right now, in the American League, Boston has a decent lead in the
wild-card race. But there are several other teams -- including the Anaheim Angels and Texas Rangers (who are
battling for the AL West lead), the Toronto Blue Jays
and the Baltimore
Orioles -- who are thinking wild card.
In the National League, you have six non-division leaders playing .500 ball
or better; the Chicago
Cubs, San Francisco
Giants, Los Angeles
Dodgers, Milwaukee
Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies
and New York Mets. The
wild card is about their only chance, it seems.
The wild-card race might make things interesting in the final weeks of the
season. It might be the only interesting race as the season winds down.
|
Surprise: Rod Beck (left) and the Cubs have the lead in the National League wild-card race as of Sunday (AP) | |
But all those teams ... they're decent teams, but do they deserve a shot at
the postseason?
Remember back in 1993, when the San Francisco Giants won 103 games but
didn't make it to the postseason?
The Giants had a good team that year. But you knew, at the end of a long
season, that the Atlanta
Braves were just one game better.
I miss that. I miss seeing the teams that work extra hard being rewarded.
Could you imagine if the New York Yankees --
the best team in baseball right now -- had a bad stretch and lost to a wild
card team before making it to the ALCS or the World Series? That would be
terrible.
The playoffs and the World Series were meant for the best teams in
baseball, not the pretty good ones. It's really not fair for the teams who
played hard all season long. It lessens their accomplishments.
The 6-4-3 with Ozzie: Anyone who saw Mark McGwire
slide in with the winning run against the Dodgers on Sunday night now knows
that McGwire is not all about home runs.
OK, so he may not be famous for his fleet feet. He knows he's not the best
baserunner. He knew he had to be elusive with the slide. You could tell
from the big smile on his face right after he scored the game-winner that
he was happy -- and relieved -- to get home with that one.
He's probably prouder of that slide, and scoring the winning run, than a
nice, long home run. Ozzie Smith, a 15-time All-Star, is baseball
analyst for CNN/SI, the 24-hour sports news network from CNN and Sports
Illustrated. His column appears every Monday exclusively on CNNSI.com.
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