This time it counts… for a ninth time! Can you feel the excitement!! Who doesn’t love the idea that tonight’s All-Star Game will determine which league will get homefield advantage in the World Series?
Oh, right, everybody.
Fans hate it. Players hate it. Managers hate it.
Ever since Bud Selig grossly overreacted to the league’s annual exhibition showcase/TV ratings cash grab ended in a tie, we’ve been sold on every real and imagined merit of the “This Time It Counts” All-Star games. Supposedly the best of each league will get to decide who “deserves” to host the World Series for four games instead of three. Only that never actually works out since the fans routinely vote in at least one undeserving player and roughly half the actual deserving players drop out of the game because of injuries (and by injuries, I mean hotel reservations in the Bahamas that they didn’t want to cancel). The idea has had its chance to win over our hearts and minds and failed miserably on both counts. Sorry, Bud, but it is time to admit it was a bad idea and move on.
Just in case you think you can’t change the format until the league suffers another embarrassing PR disaster, I’m going to go ahead and help us all out by pitching some alternative plans that Selig could implement to make us all a lot happier.
The Alternating Alternative
Arguably the only idea worse than the current implementation was the system that preceded it: alternating the homefield advantage of the World Series to the other leage every year. On the surface, it seems rather equitable, but it is nothing but arbitrary. It wouldn’t matter if the AL team won 105 games and NL pennant winner won 94, if it was the National League’s turn to host, they get the home field, despite their clearly inferior record. At least Bud’s “this time it counts” plan is loosely blamed on some kind of merit rather than dumb luck. On the other hand, the alternating home field also isn’t as in your face as the All-Star alternative, so people would complain about it less, but they’d still complain.
The Darwinian Alternative
Believe it or not, there was once a time where the team with the best record always got the World Series home field. It is an idea that is simply shocking in its simplicity since you can’t really boil a comparison between teams down to anything more black-and-white than their record. However, all the nerds out there had to go and show off their big brains and point out the inequity in such a system. Not only is there often a major talent disparity between the American and National League, but the advent of the unbalanced schedule has made it darn near impossible to get a true apples-to-apples comparison of any two teams in the same league, much less across leagues. The scheduling inequalities certainly muddies this idea up quite a bit, but at the end of the day, I can’t imagine a lot of players having the cajones to complain to the media that they deserve homefield advantage even though they won two fewer games but had a tougher strength of schedule.
The Interleague Alternative
If Selig is hellbent on the World Series home field being decided on via direct competition between the two leagues and hellbent on continuing to subject us to interleague play, why not double down on the bad decisions and hope they cancel each other out. Rather than having one exhibition game between the leagues decide matters, break that baby wide open and let all of interleague competition be the deciding factor. I can’t really think of a better way to judge which league is “better” than by taking the overall AL vs. NL record from all the interleague games that season. The only real flaw in that plan that I see is that it allows the Royals and Astros of the world to have an impact on the World Series. One could argue that the awful teams in each league should cancel each other out, but it is a concern someone will surely raise, but probably not at a volume loud enough to create the same level of discord as the current plan.
The Bill Simmons Memorial Alternative
I’m dedicating this option to The Sports Guy since he is such a fan of coming up with grand schemes that he frames as being master strokes of genius that only a fool would be against, even though the plan is totally impractical in the real world with zero percent chance of being considered, much less adopted. In the vein, I’d like to suggest that we do away with home field altogether, that way nobody has anything to complain about. This would even bring the added advantage of MLB being able to hand pick a World Series location that won’t subject to us to lousy late-October, early-November weather. Just start rotating the World Series to roofed stadiums or warm weather climates like California, just like the NFL does with the Super Bowl. Who doesn’t like good weather? A watered down version of that could be to let the two teams split the first six games between their respective stadiums and then play any potential deciding Game 7 at a neutral site, thus minimizing the series being overly affected by one team happening to get some sort of advantage from the location or type of ballpark that was pre-selected for the World Series. Who could be against this? What could be more fair? Sure, it flies in the face of history, would be a potential scheduling nightmare and only serve to exacerbate the DH/no DH debate, but didn’t you see the self-serving rhetorical questions I asked after I made my points? Look at those and you’ll forget all about any drawbacks of the idea.
The Realignment Alternative
What will probably actually happen is that Selig will do his usual thing and allow a future bad decision he makes as a way to undo a previous bad decision. This time, I think it will be the inevitable realignment of leagues that has been much discussed this year. Realignment is inevitable, but how it will be implemented remains to be seen. However, Selig could smartly use the realignment to address the inequity issues created by unbalanced schedules and level the playing field when it comes to cross-league comparisons. Once again a simple Darwinian meritocracy could rule the day. The team with the best record gets homefield, just like every other round of the playoffs (unless the better team is the Wild Card, which is a different argument for a different time), and every other sport. It is an idea that almost makes too much sense, giving it a 5% chance of actually being adopted by Selig, but at least I tried.
