World Series Aftermath

Bad ideas, tinkering, media-mania....

A few years back, Major League Baseball decided to make the All Star gamae mean something. Home field advantage for the World Series would be granted to the team whose league won the All Star Game that year.

Let's be honest, has that made the All Star Game more intense? Hardly, it all depends on the play on the field and how seriously the managers for eaach league take the game. Get the right managers squaring off, we get a ballgame; otherwise, we get a beauty contest for media gawkers.

If alternating between leagues each year isn't the best approach, then home team advantage should go to the team that has the best winning record still standing when the series begins. Keep it simple. Through the playoffs, the best records host -- none of this garbage where teams from the same division can't face each other in the first round. When it gets to the World Series, the team with the best overall record at that point, hosts.

It would be nice to see the first round extended to seven games. The problem is that would extend the season at least three days deeper into November. Starting the season earlier would not be a good idea either. Still, for the regular season, the scheduling gods could do a better job trying to get early April games scheduled for warmer climates and indoor stadiums.

Here's the big one, the sports media is hot with suggestions that the World Series should be played in a warm weather neutral site rather than the home cities of the two contenders. Buster Olney, Skip Bayless, and Peter Gammons have all weighed in on this option being desirable.

FORGET IT!!! Why should the hometown fans who have supported the team for an entire seaon not have the joy of celebrating the World Series in their city? It works for the NFL as the Super Bowl is a one game gala. However, for starters, playing seven games in a distant stadium would be a logistics nightmare. Suppose the World Series were held in Houston. Would the Houston fans with visitors from the contending teams be able to fill the stadium for up to seven games? What about the hotel space, the travel, and other considerations? A number of the warm weather cities don't have a record for great ticket sales to begin with.

Would these media geeks think that fans from cities like St. Louis, Philadelphia, Detroit, or Cleveland, as examples, could just take the time off work and spend thousands of dollars for such an extravaganza?

Truthfully, the only people who truly benefit from this idea are the media itself. The media elite don't want to travel to the smaller market cities with fewer elegant hotels, exotic restaurants, and gawdy nightlife. No, they'd prefer playing in the resort cities or big media centers that cater to their tastes.

Besides that, do they honestly think that baseball fans would stand for (new) Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park being left vacant when the championship is being determined.

Granted baseball is a much more climate sensitive sport than Football, but if fans will bundle up and pack stadia with 60-70,000 screaming fans for playoff action in January in much colder weather, what's with a few games in late October and November when real cold weather is a fluke to begin with. In most northern markets, the weather at the end of October is not that different than early April.

God is the 10th man when the players take the field, afterall. Weather is one more element that comes into play as what will happen with the game. Since there is no location in the United States that faces monsoons, rain can be dealt with. The problem isn't the rain but how the authorities deal with it. Game five should have been stopped sooner. The problem is the prospects of making up rules on the fly if the game were stopped with Philadelphia ahead. It wouldn't look good for the Phillies getting the win after the game becomes official after 4 1/2 innings. While it is understandable to make provisions for making a shortened game count during the regular season as rainouts and suspended games put enough strain on rescheduling as it is now, but the post season is a little different. What's important is that the policy be clearly understood ahead of time, and that was not true this year.

Make the ruling that all post season games must be complete nine innings games and be done with it. This isn't a complicated matter, but the authorities and media have done miracles to make a simple game unbelievably complex.

Yes, even for the World Series, it's root, root, root for the home team....