Baseball

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By Charlie in the Trees
Outsports.com

LAS VEGAS - Baseball 2003 was the best season ever. Scratch that: it was the best post-season ever. Even better than 1986. Seven playoff series. Three first-round nail-biters; only one dud. Shocking late-inning reversals in both league championship series, continuing the two most notorious curses in sport. All that topped off by a stunning six-game World Series in which a fearless band of young upstarts used clutch hitting and superb defense to triumph over the Evil Empire.

Last year’s post-season proved, once again, that even in this era of mega-market dominance, anything can and will happen in baseball. Payroll is not destiny.

The teams that have dominated since baseball went to its current six-division set up in 1986 – the Yankees, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Boston – are on the decline. New teams are only starting to emerge. Despite tremendous payroll disparity, only four or five teams in the National League and only two teams in the American, go into the season with no real hope of making the playoffs.

How long before the profligate Yankees and Red Sox leave all the rest behind with their free-spending ways? How long before new ownership has the under-achieving Dodgers on a similar pathway of league dominance? Who knows? Who cares! The cutthroat competitiveness of last season’s playoff series should continue into the 2004 season. Look for at least five great pennant races and two down-to-the-wire wild card races.

And who will win it all this year? Hard to say. The multi-round playoffs in football, for example, tend to ensure that the best team will win each season The multi-round baseball playoffs tend to ensure a bit more randomness in the choice of champions. After all, a great NFL franchise will win close to 100% of its games. On the other hand, in Major League Baseball, a great team may win only 60% of the time. It is tougher for the best to emerge from multiple playoff rounds when the best will only win 60% to 65% of the time, as opposed to a sport where the best might win 90% of the time.

Were the Marlins the best team in baseball 2003? If they were not, they certainly were the most deserving winner. Who will win it all in 2004? Most definitely, it will also be the team that proves itself most capable through another three-round trial-by-ordeal.