Changes in Baseball

Last week I posted this on my Orioles Baseball blog.  I thought I’d repost it here.

When I first started watching baseball there was two leagues, the National and the American. There wasn’t two or three divisions in each league. When the World Series came around it was against the best team of the American League and the best team of the National League. It took 162 games to earn you the change and another 4 wins to claim a baseball Championship.

In 1969, there was changes. With the expansion of each league to 12 teams, it looked best to break each league into 2 divisions, an East and a West. While you still had to play 162 games the concern was as much on winning the division as it was to win the most games in the League.

At the end of the regular season you had first 5 games to win 3 then later 7 to win for to play in the World Series. It wasn’t always fairs, since at times it wasn’t the 2 best teams who played in the playoff, but the best of each division. At times even a weak divisional winner would wind up going to the World Series. All was alright.

The a few years later the American League decided to bring in the designated hitter rule. The idea was for a hitter to bat for the pitcher to excitement to the offense. many will argue whether it was good or bad. But if nothing else, it gave identity to the two leagues, which up until that time played the same.

Then there was more expansion and instead of 2 divisions there were 3 and added a Wild Card team to post season. The fallacy of this that after the playoffs ended it was won by the team that had a hot streak. And it was possible that one of the teams could have actually been the 5th or even 6th team with the best record. And that weak team could have a 2 series streak and make the World Series.

But then baseball did, in my opinion not a good thing, was to create inter-league play and with that trying to created regional rivalry between the leagues. Some make sense others don’t. The Toronto/Philadelphia series makes as much sense as the Atlanta/Red Sox if you base it on the region.

The rivalries harks back when the White Sox and the Cubs had the first in the beginning of baseball and then later the Yankees with the Giants and Dodgers. But those came because they played in the same city and faced each other in the World Series. They grew because it happened, not because a baseball executive wished it to happen.

So as Inter-league plays begins, two of the big changes over the past 40 years come into play. Teams from the National League will play teams from the American, not in October when it should be, but in May and the designated hitter will be used by both teams in the American League city and not in the National League.

Anyway Long live baseball, but let’s remember the glory days when baseball was baseball.