The Wild-Card Un-Race

Yawn. It's that time of year again when a giant glob of also-rans hovering at about five or six games above .500 vie for the almost-as-privileged spot as division winners earn. Yes, it's the wild-card race. But sitting in a lounge chair drinking pina coladas isn't considered a race. Nothing against sitting and drinking, as it has its place in life, but a "race" involves running. Is it a race when nobody is moving? I just saw the NL wild-card standings on FOX Saturday baseball, and the Brewers were shown in that list, just a few games out, but they were under .500 for the season. Oh, boy!

It's funny how the wild-card standings, which include all the teams in the league except three, start showing up in May. The Red Sox are only 1/2 game behind the Yankees on Memorial Day, but they're leading the wild-card race! Oh, boy! The standings won't show the Yankees, because by being 1/2 game better than the Sox they've played themselves out of the race, but they have as much chance of winning the wild-card. All they would need to do to get into the wild-card race would be to lose a few games.

Then there exists the confusing position of being in two races, the division race and the wild-card race. Your team is one game out in the division and one game out in the wild-card race, and the teams ahead of you in each race are playing each other. Who do you cheer for?

Just a few reasons I'm opposed to the three division plus wild-card format (and opposed to the overall NFL-ization in general) in baseball.