The best regular season I can think of -- in terms of weird September comebacks, anyway -- was that season a few years ago when the Rays came from way back and knocked out Boston on the last day of the season. The Cardinals did the same thing to the Braves.
It wasn't that long ago.
It was 2011:
"There has never been a better regular season in baseball than this one, at least not lately."
What is your agenda?
This is such an implausibly ridiculous statement, that I find it utterly impossible that you genuinely feel this way.
"All the way to the last weekend of the season, you had two New York teams in the playoffs, you had Chicago in the playoffs, you had the Dodgers in the playoffs and the Angels still trying to get in."
Well, gee.
When 1/3rd of the teams make the "playoffs," then a lot of teams will make the "playoffs."
There is simply no comparison to the first nine decades of MLB because the teams really had to earn it.
"That’s just the overture.
You had two Texas teams in play and the Cardinals — and their 100 victories — and the Royals in play and the team in Canada with as strong a chance to win it all as anybody."
OK. You're clearly prefer quantity over quality.
I gladly admit that Saturday's game in Texas drew a big crowd who thought they'd witness a division-clinching event. It took to game #161 to get some buzz in Arlington, but it's more buzz than I thought they'd get.
Toronto (aka "the team in Canada") is a huge success story in 2015. Again, that took a division title. I doubt they'd get jazzed up about a wild card, but, on the other hand, they've waited a long time.
"But the country is supposed to have passed the game by.
Sure it has."
Relative to football, I think, but that's water that passed under the bridge a long time ago.
"You know who says that?"
Who?
Who says this?
Who dares to question the Selig Success Story of watered-down playoff teams and luxury taxes and "parity"? Is it one of the usual suspects? Is it one of your unnamed friends, a "huge Yankee fan," or such? Is it Rudy Giuliani? Is it one of the contestants from "Dancing with the Stars"? Is it your father/mother/wife/one of your children? Is it Scott Boras? Is it ARod's platelet-spinning doctor? Is it Mike Baxter, that kid from Archbishop Molloy who saved Johan Santana's no-hitter? Is is Mr. Met?
"People who don’t really know anything about baseball or who never cared about baseball in the first place, and think that the real national pastime is deciding between DraftKings and FanDuel."
DraftKings and FanDuel probably bother with fantasy baseball, but fantasy baseball is undoubtedly a teeny tiny fraction of their fantasy football business.
Which kind of disproves your point, doesn't it? The popularity of football-fueled DraftKings and FanDuel? Millions of Americans ignoring baseball?
If there are enough people who never cared about baseball in the first place, then ... well, you finish the conclusion about national pastimes and such.
I think Cubs vs. Pirates will be an interesting wild card game.
The Yankees will benefit from the wild card this year and the Yankees were the first AL wild card team ever, back in 1995.
I still insist that the 2015 regular season was ruined by the wild card safety net.
The AL East race was boring because Girardi never pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Of course, some of the games were exciting -- Beltran's 3-run HR, a couple of Tanaka masterpieces -- but it was nowhere near the tension of a good old-fashioned pennant race between two legit rivals.
The AL West and all the possible permutations that are coming down to the last week? Imagine if only one of these teams could make the playoffs.
Who loses in this scenario? Pittsburgh and Chicago. Tough. Sorry, but you need to beat St. Louis ... and maybe one of wild card teams would have been compelled to really go for it at the trading deadline, with the knowledge that 95 wins wasn't going to cut it.
That's how I feel about that ... and I've never even looked at DraftKings or FanDuel.
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