In 1994 the American League and the National League went from two divisions to three with the intent of having two preliminary rounds to qualify for the World Series, a sort of tournament played in each league by the three division winners and best runner up. Not a bad concept except that some divisions had only four teams, which made zero sense over a 162 game regular season.
A dispute between the players and owners caused the season to end in August with no post season play. I hoped that they would come to their senses and dump the third division but by then the owners had selected one of their own to be commissioner: Milwaukee's Allen Huber "Bud" Selig. Wild cards started playing in the tournament in 1995.
In 1999 the two leagues merged, eliminating the league presidents, combining the umpiring staffs but preserving the designated hitter (DH) in what should now have been called the American Conference, since it was no longer an independent league. After a while I started calling this new merged entity the Major Baseball League (MBL), a sort of play on words of the National Football League (NFL). Selig moved his Milwaukee team from the American to the National Conference and in 2012 Houston was moved from the National to the American Conference, further proof that it was one league. For the first time since the third division was added in 1994, each division had the same number of teams. Unfortunately, the number of teams was only five, a ridiculously low number for 162 games. Eighteen years and that's what Selig had come up with.
In 2012 the MBL added a second wild card team to each conference. Click the link below to view the standings with one week remaining in the 2013 season.
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/wildcard.jsp?tcid=mm_mlb_standings
The top two Wild Card teams from each league make the postseason and play each other in a one-game playoff.
If two or more teams are tied for the division lead they are listed among the division leaders as well as among Wild Card teams.
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There's basically no competition in the National Conference for that second wild card spot in 2013 but in the American Conference these teams are competing:
Tampa
Texas
Cleveland
Yankees
Baltimore
Kansas City.
Six teams for two spots, eight games to go. Cool, right? But how many fans are showing up, especially in head to head match ups? Not nearly enough. Oddly, even with so many star players missing for much of the season, the Yankees are drawing well this weekend. The Yanks seem dangerous, like a wounded animal, the team no one will want to play should they qualify for the tournament, especially Boston in the first round. What goes around, comes around.
Maybe the Yankee attendance is due to the unusual scheduling of the National Conference Giants, 2012 tournament winners but badly out of it in 2013. The Giants had just played the Mets and stayed in town for another three against the Yankees. Attendance at Yankee Stadium against the Giants: Friday 41,000, Saturday 42,000. Sunday will probably be a full house for Mariano Rivera day, which is possibly the final Stadium start for Andy Pettitte, who is also retiring. Saturday attendance elsewhere:
In Kansas City, Texas won; 21,000
In Tampa, Tampa beat Baltimore; 21,000
In Cleveland, Cleveland beat Houston; 26,000
Despite excitement in the media it does not appear that fans have been fooled into thinking that their mediocre teams are actually good. The MBL was better off with Barry Bonds hitting a lot of home runs.
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