I understand the sentiment. I really do. To a point, I agree. The playoffs are getting watered down in all sports. There are so many open spots that it often feels like the regular season is just an extended exhibition schedule.
Many baseball fans still long for the days between 1903 and 1968, when there were two leagues (first with eight teams each, then ten) and only the first-place finishers, two in total, were allowed to go to the World Series. They also usually admit that it was fine when the leagues were divided into divisions. From 1969 to 1993, the same rules applied: first place only.
Fewer football fans feel the same nostalgia when they think of the way the NFL (and AFL) used to simply pair the champions of the East with the champions of the West. But there is also less controversy because professional football introduced wild cards as early as the 1969 AFL season. The NFL has had wild cards for longer than not.
But here’s the problem:
Wild cards are a real lifesaver. Sure, it used to be fun when your team just had one of those years, won 102 and easily swept the series. And of course it was even more fun when it stayed exciting right up until the end and you narrowly knocked off an opponent on the last day of the season. Books are written about teams like that. Movies are made.
But the overwhelming majority of teams from 1903 to 1993 had the exact opposite experience. The fact that the season was played to its conclusion starting June 1 is a harsh judgment for any fan, not to mention the teams that actually finished the season.
Our baseball season in New York offers the two best examples of why the wild card works.
On one hand, you have the Mets, who in previous seasons would have been done if they were 11 games under .500 and 18 games behind the Phillies. Done in May is the worst kind of done. And say what you will about the folly of the Mets and Braves currently doing this weird dance of shared incompetence, but the fact is that they’re both playing meaningful games. That’s a good thing.
The Yankees? Look, they might end up winning the East (and I believe they will), but the fact is that the Orioles are good enough to beat them there. And if they do, and they do because they won 101 games instead of 100, it’s hard to argue that the Yankees don’t belong in the playoffs. The winningest team of the Casey Stengel era was 1954. They won 103. They finished the season eight games behind Cleveland. Is that true? I bet the members of the 1954 Yankees would see it differently.
Other sports have always had an open-door policy when it comes to wildcards. The NHL even once allowed 16 of 21 teams into the playoffs, which was admittedly a bit extreme.
But I still remember what ignited the first spark of the great Knicks renaissance of the ’90s. That was 1987-88, Rick Pitino’s first year as coach. To start, this team was just as bad as the previous three, bottoming out at 14-28. They were still not exactly bragging rights at 37-44 heading into the final game of the season, but… remarkably, in Game 82, they faced a Pacers team that was 38-43. The tiebreaker meant this was a win-and-win. The Knicks won an 88-86 thriller at Market Square Arena, made the playoffs, and even took a game off the Bird-McHale-Parrish Celtics when they got there.
Maybe it’s absurd to consider a team with a .463 record over an entire season a playoff team, but for a generation of Knicks fans, that Finals was one of the few truly important games in 15 years. It was important, believe me.
For the sake of completeness, here is a list of teams that would have been denied the chance to win the title if they had also had to finish first:
The Knicks of 1973.
The Islanders of 1980.
The Islanders of 1983.
The Giants of 2007.
And you can’t tell me that the New York sports world would have looked better without the banners that were hung for these teams, or that they meant less to the fans who cheered for those runs. For fun, here are four more teams that never got a chance because they couldn’t use a wild card.
The Dodgers of 1942 (104-50).
The Yankees of 1954 (103-51).
The Giants of 1970 (9-5).
The Mets of 1985 (98-64).
Personally, I would like to watch the playoff games that these teams were not allowed to participate in.
Vacs punches
I come back to a question that my buddy Joel Sherman and I often asked ourselves in the bad old days of the Wilpon Mets: When it came to the decision to let Hawk Tuah Girl throw out the first pitch on Thursday afternoon in front of 15,000 camp kids, what in the world was her second Selection?
Our old friend Ian O’Connor has done it again with “Out of the Darkness,” his book about Aaron Rodgers. It has everything you would expect from a gifted reporter and storyteller, and sheds as much light on the Rodgers mystery as possible. Simply a great read.
Now this is cool: Sunday night, ESPN’s “KidsCast,” an alternate presentation of the Little League World Series with an all-youth commentary team, will air on ESPN2. One of the commentators: Thomas Gamba, a rising junior at Chaminade High (full disclosure: Go Flyers!), will be among the speakers. He has spent time with the Bruce Beck Sports Broadcasting Camp and the Chaminade broadcast program run by former mail carrier Pat Reichart.
Strike back at Vac
Bill Dancosse: When I talk about starting pitchers and a six-inning rule, I think back to the 1960s: A manager would have risked his life to take Bob Gibson out of the game in the sixth inning of a two-hit shutout for throwing 100 pitches. That alone would have been worth the price of a ticket.
Vacuum: Gibby, Drysdale, Marichal and Seaver were practically sweating after 100 throws.
Tom Crehan: Speaking of Pete Alonso: The Mets haven’t won anything with him, so they can’t win anything without him.
Vacuum: The answers I received were 80% ambivalent and 20% “let him go”. Completely unscientific, but food for thought.
@Dave_in_718: A mention of the 1962 Mets makes people smile. The 2024 White Sox are just a bad team with no personality and definitely without Casey Stengell at the helm.
@MikeVacc: And Marvelous Miguel Vargas just doesn’t sound that good.
Richard Siegelman: Aaron Judge hit 300 home runs in his first 3,431 at-bats. That works out to a) 800 in his first 9,150 at-bats (66 other players did that); and b) 900 in his first 10,294 at-bats (24 players did that).
Vacuum: I just wish he was a few years younger. I’m afraid he’s just running out of time. But I’d be happy if I’m wrong.
Next Thursday, AKTIV Against Cancer will honor Yonkers legend James Blake not only for his 10 tennis titles, but also for his philanthropic work. Blake is donating over $1 million to Memorial Sloan Cancer Center. A big shout out to Blake, a man who has always given his all on and off the court.
