Why MLB Doesn’t Care About Great Pennant Races

Here’s why the current protocol sucks: We’ve been robbed of the single best thing that baseball has to offer, that being a tight pennant race featuring two great teams.

Here’s why neither Bud Selig nor anyone else who matters gives a damn: Hardly anyone else does, either.

Let’s see ... 53 words ... onward!

That sort of thing is, of course, gone. Now, if you win 100 games you’re in. If you win 95 games you’re almost in; only one team in the Wild Card era has won at least 95 games and failed to qualify for the postseason.*

Great pennant races? Still got ‘em, some years. Great pennant races featuring great teams? They’re almost entirely a thing of the past, and will be even less likely once the inevitable move to add postseason teams is made.

This might bother you, if you’re like me at all. As a fan, I live for pennant races featuring great teams. I suspect that you do, too.

Here’s a dirty little secret, though ... We’re uncommon. We love baseball; the great majority of baseballs fans direct (on average) 93.7 percent of their baseball passion toward their favorite team, and their favorite team only.

You see, Commissioner Bud and his merry henchmen really never had anything to lose. They knew -- I mean, assuming they bothered to think about this, which I’m not at all sure about -- that the great teams would attract fans regardless of the pennant-race situation, while some of the non-great teams would draw somewhat better because the Wild Card was available. And while Selig habitually overstates the impact of interleague play and the Wild Cards on attendance, I suspect attendance is slightly higher with those things than without.

It worked. The local fans are happy, and the local fans drive MLB’s revenues.

Unfortunately, this leaves you and I to just the scraps.

Fortunately, in most years the scraps are still pretty damn tasty.