Not to rain on our grand Bronx baseball parade like the remnants of a hurricane, but what, exactly, is everyone so fired up about? With both the Yankees and the Red Sox seemingly nestled in postseason position, how can home-field advantage in October be worth all this insomnia, all this angst?
We scorn basketball and hockey for selling us this overhyped "it's for position and pride" baloney when we are reminded year after year that the real pitch is the playoffs. So who really believes that winning the American League East will inoculate Yankeedom from being scared hitless by the specter of Schilling and Pedro in a potential American League Championship Series rematch?
(Hey genius: it's me, your heart, speaking. You really need to stop listening to your brain and intellectualizing what you should be measuring by the muscle rapidly beating inside your chest.
Haven't you noticed the more than 100,000 sore-throated fans braving this weekend's dire forecasts? How so many of them stayed in their soggy seats almost to midnight for Friday's series opener? How thrilling even yesterday's 14-4 Yankees smackdown became as Jon Lieber flirted with a no-hitter for six and two-third innings, demonstrating once again that every Yankees-Red Sox game is an event with the makings of an epic?
On the dampest of nights, how could you not be cooled Friday by the ice in Bronson Arroyo's veins and pumped by Tanyon Sturtze's passion and stunned by Mariano Rivera's mouthy response to Kenny Lofton's Tuesday-night-against-Tampa-Bay pursuit of Johnny Damon's ninth-inning, broken-bat flare? Rivera's frustrations made a rare appearance because it was the ninth inning of a tie game and, above all, against the Red Sox!)
O.K., I'll give you that Rivera's continuing struggles against Boston are troubling for the Yankees, and Friday's game was a tough one to lose. It sure had a devastating carryover effect, didn't it? The Red Sox were downgraded from their Friday night high to an afternoon Derek Lowe. Maybe these games are brain food for New England's fragile psyche, but, please, the Yankees aren't about divisional titles. More important for them during these next two weeks will be to determine if Jason Giambi can be of any use in October and for Manager Joe Torre to set a starting rotation that in the last week suddenly doesn't seem all that unstable.
Sorry, but when the 1978 playoff game between the Yankees and the Red Sox is the seminal baseball event of your adult life, these prefabricated September showdowns are just dress rehearsals. Real pennant-race baseball is all about elimination, baby. Even Commissioner Bud Selig sort of admitted as much when I offered my opinion that back-to-back wild-card team championships underscored a need to sanctify what should be baseball's lifeblood - its six-month soap opera of a regular season.
"Last year I thought we would add two more wild-card teams," Selig said from his office in Milwaukee. "It's a valid point people make about the rewards for winning your division. We thought about it all winter, and hired mathematicians to study the possibilities, but decided to stay where we are. We wanted to be careful that we don't overreact."
A format that significantly increases the odds for wild-card teams is no novel idea. Bob Costas pleaded for wild-card expansion last season in a commentary published by The New York Times.
(See? That's your problem, Einstein. Costas starts whining and now you can't appreciate these Yankees-Red Sox games for the wonderful theater they are without getting all existential. Excuse me, but wasn't it Costas who accused baseball of demythologizing summer with the original wild-card format? Flip-flopper!)
You obviously don't follow nuanced thought. Costas's point was that once baseball made the wild-card plunge, its next obligation was to make necessary adjustments.
An additional playoff miniseries would not necessarily lengthen the postseason. Division winners would be guaranteed shorter roads to the World Series and an extra day or two to rest their pitchers. That would not only raise the stakes in divisional races but would heighten interest in even more playoff-contending cities.
(Listen up, brainiac. There are still five contenders for the N.L. wild card, and if it's a win-or-go-home thrill, check out the A.L. West. The loser of the A's-Angels dogfight will wind up frozen out of October, unless the Yankees knock the Red Sox back in their laps.
Which is, of course, still possible, because these are the Red Sox, and while you're busy quoting the commissioner, do the right thing and point out that he also believes his sport has never been better.)
Fine. Selig did say: "We have division races going on as well as wild-card races. We're setting attendance records. Despite all the criticism of the wild card, it's almost amazing how it's worked out."
Agreed, to a point. But tweaking the current format, giving the winner of this still-tight Yankees-Red Sox race a reward both decided and deserved would strengthen such a September showdown to category four, way beyond this weekend's tropical storm.
(Oh, stuff it, egghead. Next weekend, we're going up to Fenway, where the natives, yesterday notwithstanding, already smell blood. Don't forget your hard hat.)
By Harvey Araton.
From The New York Times of September 19, 2004.