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May
5
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Posted May 5th, 2010 by Knoedler  |
With an expansion of the playoff field in Major League Baseball, a total of twelve teams (six from each league) would be in the chase for the World Series.
As the Major League Baseball playoff format stands, four teams from the National League (NL) and four teams from the American League (AL) move on to the postseason. Those teams represent each of the division’s winners and one wild card team (the team with the best record that does not win a division) from each league. While most teams rightfully claim their place in the playoffs, others are just as good and also deserve a shot at a postseason berth.
Let’s take a look at the 2009 AL Playoff Race, in particular the game that would determine the Central Division champion. To claim such a title, the Minnesota Twins had to defeat the Detroit Tigers via a one game, play-in tiebreaker. The final score: 6-5 Minnesota over Detroit. Minnesota won the game outright. But the fact that they became champions by only one run and Detroit had to sit on the sidelines in October has to make you wonder why Major League Baseball still uses a four-team-per-league format.
The current format has been in place since MLB officials passed the present alignment in 1994, at which time the two-team-per-league format was annulled and the four-team-per-league setup was born. Thus, the Divisional Series was created, bringing the total amount of playoff teams per year for both leagues to eight. Yes, playoff reform was done only sixteen years ago (compared to the twenty-five-year span that occurred between 1969 -the creation of the National League and American League- and 1994) but when quality teams like the 2009 Detroit Tigers are left at the curbside, something needs to be done.
The American League has 14 teams overall while the National League has 16 teams. This is comparable to the National Football League, which has 16 teams per conference and follows a six-team playoff format per conference. So why shouldn’t the Majors change? Even though the NFL has four divisions per conference and MLB has three divisions per league, the six-team format is still possible. For example, both the NL and the AL could take the top two teams from each division with the two teams possessing the best record from each league obtaining first-round byes. For this to happen, however, an additional round of the playoffs must be created (we’ll call this the “Wild Card Series”). The Wild Card Series would follow a best-out-of-3-games system scheduled for three consecutive days. This would be fair to the top two teams per league in that they would have an opportunity to rest their players, specifically their pitchers.
Succeeding the Wild Card Series will be the Divisional Series. Currently, the Divisional Series plays a best-out-of-five-games series. This format would stay the same under the new plan. The same cannot be said for the League Championship Series, however, as the current series is a best-out-of-seven while the new plan would play only five games. The World Series, though, would remain a seven-game series.
Some questions must definitely be asked before any changes are made. For one, would it be more feasible (be it for financial reasons or otherwise) for Commissioner Bud Selig and other top MLB officials to keep the current format (5-7-7) and leave any reformations for another time? Would the idea of enlarging the format to 3-5-5-7 be better? If not those two proposals, how about this: fewer days off in between the series, perhaps only one day like in the regular season? The last of which is a small change, but the shorter duration of time between games could keep multi-sport fans interested in baseball at a time when football is starting to peak.
The idea of two more teams making it to the post-season may not sit well with the more conservative fans of professional baseball, but imagine the profit that the Majors would reap from such a change. After all, Major League Baseball, like all professional sports, is a business that is out to make profit. Of the four additional teams (two per league) that would have made the 2009 playoffs under this reformation, only the Florida Marlins averaged fewer than 20,000 tickets sold per game. The three other teams (Texas, Detroit, and San Francisco) each averaged over 25,000 tickets sold per game with the Tigers and Giants averaging over 30,000 fans in attendance.
With Major League Baseball teams’ attendance dropping in both 2008 and 2009, league officials might want to look at creating a larger playoff field. This, of course, would not only bring more teams into the fold, but also some of the fans that sit dormant until Spring Training. And what do the fans bring: money. Who knows, the expansion of the playoff format might be a homerun for Major League Baseball.
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12:52
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May
1
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Posted May 1st, 2010 by ecorley |
Susan B. Anthony said it best “There is not the woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother;. for any one who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it.” Susan B. Anthony is saying here that on a whole, woman do not want to be dependent on anyone and need to use every resource they have to strike against the masculine hand to gain their independence. As the words spilled from her mouth, she executed a movement with a significant underlying tone. She ate and breathed the power of equilibrium with hopes that within thirty, forty or fifty years American women would be living her dream. She was also quoted saying “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.”. Unfortunately, ninety years later in the work place we, the people, is still “we, the male citizens”.
In 2010, the government shamefully displayed the pay rate between men and woman and noted a significant sixty-four cents to the dollar difference. The government excuses this attack on dignity of numerous working women on terms like “Women have fewer years of work experience” or “Women in the workforce are also less likely to work a full-time schedule and are more likely to leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men”.
This is the epitome of blasphemy upon the struggles of so many good hearted women. How can we as a nation justify the discrimination based on the means of reproduction? Basically what the government is stating is that women are more likely to take time off of work because they are wearing so many different hats and that causes a decrease in female workers pay rate. The thought behind that embodies idiocy, the thought that women should be punished because of natural duties.
It is absolutely ridiculous that as human’s, we have not accepted the fact that it takes both man and woman to make a child. In the work place this thought is still not explicit in means of a pay raise. Although demographics have changed with a total of 29% of dad’s staying home and taking care of their children and the amount of women being the breadwinner in the household has escalated since the 1950’s, employers still put it upon the women to be a, “Jack of all trades”. It is stated that women do not do as much hard work; but is it not equivalent when the woman comes home cleans and cooks after working all day. The excuses that the government is giving are not plausible and should not be accepted by women. Women need to stand up as the righteous women of the early 1900’s. If modern American women had the integrity of some colonial American women, we would not find ourselves in this position.
“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.”
- Susan Brownell Anthony
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9:23
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