The Wild Card Game is heartbreaking, but that’s the point

Ah, the Wild Card Game. It’s the John Cena of MLB, in that some of y’all love it and some of y’all hate it, but goddammit if we aren’t always talking about it, anyway. Personally, I adore the Wild Card Game, because it’s rude as hell. There is nothing else like it in baseball, which is such a marathon-not-a-sprint kind of game... until the Wild Card, which gives you three hours to disarm a bomb and then blows your season all over the place if you fail to do so.

You could say it’s manufactured drama, but hey, welcome to the entire concept of sports. At first, there was no postseason, just a first-place finisher. Then there was a World Series, with the regular season being the determiner of which teams were in it. Then there were League Championship Series, wild cards, League Division Series, and now the Wild Card round: it’s all made up, none of this is organic, but it sure is fun.

The Cubs faltered in September and hung on just enough to avoid ceding the division to the Brewers until Game 163. Rather than go home like in the olden days, they got one more shot, once again in front of their home crowd, to prove that they actually do belong in the postseason. Or, failing deserving being there, they at least had won the right game at the right game and given themselves second life.

Instead, the Rockies, who outlasted the Diamondbacks and Cardinals and weathered a Dodgers assault, were the victors, and the Cubs went from having the NL’s best record to blowing both of their second chances at the NLDS. You can manufacture that kind of heartbreak, sure, but usually in the scripted sense, not in the letting the chips fall where they may within the system you’ve constructed way. What a delicious, sudden defeat for a team that stood above the rest of the National League pack just a few weeks ago. What a painful memory that’ll haunt these fans until the next time the Cubs are able to do something that helps their followers cope with this loss. We have the Wild Card Game to thank for this.

And in the American League, the A’s, who won 97 games, were given the chance to topple the Yankees, who won 100, and only finished in second place because the Red Sox set a franchise record for wins by picking up 108 Ws. Two great teams from two difficult divisions, not quite good enough to contend with a team making history and the defending champion Astros, but only one was allowed to continue on. Baseball threw one spear into the middle of the field, and told these two teams only one of them would be allowed to leave. Baseball Thunderdome rules.

The A’s and their fans are crushed, of course. Oakland hasn’t been to the postseason since 2014, when they lost the most heartbreaking Wild Card Game of them all to the Royals and their singles factory. They’ve been through a lengthy rebuild since then, one that paid off with this 97-win team full of exciting young players and great decisions, and now their postseason run is over so soon, too soon, and the long offseason awaits the roster and the fan base. Will everything come together again next year? Did the A’s blow their one chance at reentering the world of relevant baseball? These thoughts are haunting, and there is no exorcism available until this time next year at the earliest.

Is it fair? No, but this was never about fair. It’s about entertainment, and watching the baseball gods just baseball the hell out of the A’s and Cubs, forcing their fans through the anger and denial and acceptance of an entire series loss in just a few hours, has me entertained. Long live the Wild Card Game.