A 9 Game World Series?

[JoseA]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scott Boras loves the World Series so much, he wants to make it best-of-nine -- and open with two games at a neutral site.

Arguing that the shift would create a marketing bonanza that would rival the Super Bowl, Boras outlined his ideas in a two-page letter he sent to baseball commissioner Bud Selig on April 15.

"I know from an owner's perspective, this is a gold mine," Boras said. "To have a World Series Weekend, WSW, I think it will create a stage that the game has not seen."

Article

What are your thoughts on this?

I think this would be a dumb idea, 7 is long enough the way it is. The season is long enough the way it is, no reason to make it any longer.

Although MLB would make a lot more money if you think about it....

[Steve Avery]

Let's consider stupid ideas that we have.

1. The DH - hey, why not just call the game in from a car phone?

2. The wildcard - remember the last meaningful PENNANT race? It was in 1995.

3. Interleague play - fine if you live in New York, Chicago, LA, or the Bay Area. Do any Braves fans really see the Braves and Red Sox as a 'rivalry?' Are the Baltimore Orioles and the St. Louis Cardinals 'natural' rivals because the O's were once the Browns?

4. The All-Star game home field advantage. Well, there's one good thing about this and that is that you can immediately start making flight plans to only one or two cities. Stupid. Why should home field advantage ride on the shoulders of a Texas Ranger whose team is going nowhere but who has been rumored to be traded to a National League contender and he's up with the game on the line? Why not just strike out since it doesn't personally affect you negatively and might actually help you if you get traded?

Pretty soon, we'll have a best of 11 World Series available only on PPV with game 11 scheduled for Christmas Day at a neutral site. Santa will throw out the first ball.

[bedir than average]

For a traditionalist you seem to ignore that the World Series started as a 9 game set

[nanwynnfan]

7 Game Series & Reasons Why

I, for one, believe a 9 game WS would be the epitome of greed for MLB, especially in light of the protracted 162 game schedule and post-season play following that.

It has been said that the WS started as a 9 game affair; and that prevailed for one season, 1903, when both leagues averaged 136-7 games in the regular schedule.

The 154 game schedule started in 1904 when there was no WS; and when the WS resumed in 1905, it was a best-of-7 affair, like today.

The old game, before night ball, had doubleheaders every Sunday and several key summer holidays, so the 154 game schedule could be acommodated within a ssesible seasonal framework in which the Fall Classic started in late September or the firts two weeks of October. Now, we here announcers on tv ads counting off shopping days until Christmas before the Fall Classic ends.

I don't much care for the wild card either, simply because after a grueling 162
game schedule, the BEST should vie against the BEST only. A forever Red Sox fan, I was thrilled in 2004 to see the WS Championship nesting in Boston, with an explanation point driven home by the 8 game sweep. However, the results would have been much more satisfying had the Sox won the pennant and the Series.

DH

When the DH was introduced I had mixed feelings but tended to go with it for several reasons, largely based on childhood impressions, situations and "what-ifs:"

1. I was lucky enough to have seen MLB live pre-WW II, although not by very much; and the thrill of seeing prime hitters like Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg, Cecil Travis, Charlie Keller, Joe DiMaggio, Luke Appling hit before the War took chunks away from them gave me a soft spot for talented hitters.

In a later context seeing age or injury limiting their all-around ability to run-hit-field but not their hitting. I'd hate to think of a guy who can still work counts, make contact, hit lasers, or be a fearsome long ball threat - done - because of a bum knee.

2. The carry-over for that is that fans deserve to see these talents [IMO] and they enhance game execution and strategy options far more than the stereotyped default "out" assumed to be pitchers hitting in their own slots. Heck, if you've got a good-hitting pitcher, make HIM your DH when he's on the mound.

Inter-League Play

I could live with it and without it. Since baseball is a game of stats and history, I think there's validity to a Braves-Red Sox rivalry; a Dodgers or Giants - Yankee rivalry, simply because the history is there. Mel Ott is a Giant - forever. I could see a Phillies -A's rivalry as well; and the Orioles-Cardinals makes sense if one recalls the 1944 WS, and some of the great names that lit up the two franchises for so long.

As for the All-Star Game home field advantage, why not. It's in season, smack dab in mid-season, and has benefit that's current, not a carry-over like to tax loss to a next year. It also lend a cachet of significance to a huge fan and money draw, so where's the harm? Keep that and dump the wild card, IMO.

[jtur88]

It's true that the first WS was a 9-game affair, but the second year, it was not played at all, so it appaently was not a 'marketing bonanza'. The next time it was tried was 1919, and somehow that one did not inspire repetition, either, although theh 9-game idea lasted two more years before being avandoned. A 9-game series is like a Washington franchise---it always fails.

You do realize, don't you, that "marketing bonanza' and 'baseball' are completely antithetical idea, given that baseball is the only sport that can stand on its own merits, without any phony marketing bonanzas to make it seem like a genuine sports event.

If there is any significant difference between the merit of a 7- and a 9-game series, how do you establish the ideal number of games? Just keep changing the number every year or two, hoping to get the right 'marketing bonanza' by trial and error? Maybe we can find a marketing bonanza if we keep fiddling with the number of strike and balls and outs and bases and innings? Like Basketball does. If you want fairness, we can have an 8-game WS, and some of them will end in a tie, to be decided by a home-run derby, like the World Cup soccer.

Or best yet, slightly expand interleague play, so every team plays an equal schedule, and then who needs a WS? The TV networks, that's who.

[nanwynnfan]

Or best yet, slightly expand interleague play, so every team plays an equal schedule, and then who needs a WS? The TV networks, that's who.


... and just maybe the owners and players who derive most of their paychecks from media coverage of thir games ... and the fans for whom the WS is their traditional "bonanza."

[bedir than average]

jtur, I just see no reason why exposing more people to the game is a bad thing.

[Zen653]

I love the wild card. Without the wild card, you end up in situations where inferior teams reach the playoffs because of geographic luck.

For example, let's say we reverted to the two division allignment. Boston wins the AL East with 100 wins, New York finishes in second place with 98 wins, Detroit finishes in third place with 95 wins. In the AL West, Seattle wins with 88 games. Is it really fair to exclude the second best team in the league simply because it has the misfortune of being located in the northeast? Nanwynn wants to see the "best of the best," yet under the old system, he'd only get the best against the fourth best.

The same problem exists if you re-align to four divisions. Let's say that Boston wins the AL Northeast with 100 wins, and Toronto finishes in second with 98 wins. The winners of the other three divisions are the Angels, Tigers and Orioles at 95, 92 and 85 wins, respectively. Should the Blue Jays be excluded from the playoffs despite being the second best team in the league? Are we better off seeing the 85-win team in the playoffs than the club with 98 wins?

The wild card is the perfect compromise between ignoring divisional races entirely and rewarding teams that have better records than their divisional winning counterparts. It adds only one second place team into the mix; usually that second place team would have been a division winner if located in another part of the country.

As for the claim that the wild card destroys pennant races, I have to ask if you've been following baseball for the past decade. The existence of the wild card has allowed twice as many teams to compete for a playoff spot into the final month of the season. In the old days, pennant races were over around the All-Star break. Now we see division races and wild card races coming down to the final weekend of the season. Every year, there seems to be at least one playoff spot up for grabs during the last series in September, and about two or three spots up for grabs during the last 2-3 weeks of the season. That's a vast improvement over the past, where a real pennant race was a once-a-decade occurrence.

[Steve Avery]

Originally Posted by bedir than average

For a traditionalist you seem to ignore that the World Series started as a 9 game set

The first World Series was a best of nine. So were those in 1919, 1920, and 1921.

It didn't set the world on fire; one was fixed.

[bedir than average]

There also wasn't television, national newspapers, sat-radio and the rest of the modern media around back then. I still don't see how exposing more people to the game is bad.

[jtur88]

Before 1960, a team that went to the World Series played at least 158 games. Under the present framework, it is already 14 additional games, at 172. You want to raise it to 173, I don't see how that extra game will "expose more people to the game", especially considering they will be played in November. And considering that Fox won't let them throw the first pitch until about 8:40 or so, so no school kids can watch WS games, so you can play best 50 out of 99 if you want to, every game ending after midnight on weeknights in February, and how does that "expose more people to the game"?

[nanwynnfan]

"As for the claim that the wild card destroys pennant races, I have to ask if you've been following baseball for the past decade."


I wish that I had worded the "Best" vs. the "Best" only part of my response a bit more effectively; but what I intended was "Best" in region vs. "Best"
in region only.

MLB, having expanded coast-to-coast and with 30 franchises, attempting to stimulate rivalries between franchises of different leagues has take on itself the added burden of monitoring and doing what it can to preserve reasonable expectations balanced competition among divisions and keeping fan interest alive across the broadest possible spectrum.

Yes, it's possible for a solid team in the AL East, with a record of 95-67 to come in second to a team with a 99-63 record and not get into post-season.
True as well that a team in the AL West takes its division with a 87-75 record, perhaps 82-80; and go to post season; and I say so be it.

I won't quibble over the differences and the subjective emotionalism that might be justified; but often, the team with the least convincing record may have faced the toughest level of competition, maybe not.

Fans from Oakland who fill seats for their 82-80 club might get rubbed out in the first leg of post-season; but they just might take it all from the 99-63 Red Sox. Then too, the 89-73 Tigers might take the prize. Regional champs vying for pennants that mean something are part of the game tradition. Call me old-fashioned ... I'm thinking Seattle with 116 wins some years back.

A direct 5 game divisional champion elimination in each league and a final 7 game WS, IMO, would be perfect and get the series over comfortably before Thanksgiving.

[Nat]

I don't see any reason to change current format either, especially not at the beckoning of an arrogant players' agent whose done nothing positive for the game in all his years of involvement before now. I don't think it would be such a cash-cow either...the longer the series, the less interested viewer-base. As already stated, the season is long enough & needs to be wrapped up before snowfall.

[Steve Avery]

Originally Posted by bedir than average

For a traditionalist you seem to ignore that the World Series started as a 9 game set

Not every traditional idea is a good one.

Night games are not a bad thing. I don't even think turf is necessarily a bad thing.

Besides - you're ignoring the fact it was only a 9-game series for ONE YEAR and then we went to seven. We had another 3-year spurt of 9-game series in 1919-1921 because of the war.

Oh - and I was NOT against the splitting into four divisions in 1969 (we went from two pennant races to four; in 1994, we went from four to zero).

So tradition for the sake of tradition is poor.

[Steve Avery]

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

"As for the claim that the wild card destroys pennant races, I have to ask if you've been following baseball for the past decade."

.

What PENNANT races ever happened? We've had folks that could actually benefit by losing games because it gave them a different opponent in an early round.

We had a decent one in 1995. That's it.

A team that isn't even the best in its own division can be the best in baseball? Sounds more like the BCS to me.