Selig: Playoffs Expanding to 10 Teams in 2012

[Guest Edgy DC]

Well, in the cultural post-mortem on Omar, there haven't been a lot of warm fuzzies for 2006.

[Frayed Knot]

HahnSolo wrote: Willets Point wrote: Considering this I think that North American sports leagues should give an award to the teams with the best regular season record that would be considered an honor equivalent to winning the post-season tournament. In baseball, this would mean that the team with the best regular season record would win the Pennant rather than the team that qualifies for the World Series. (Retrospectively, the Mets would lose their 1973 & 2000 pennants, but gain pennants for 1988 & 2006 so it's all square). I think the NHL does this. Yet there's not a single NHL player who would ever cherish that more than the Stanley Cup.

Especially since the President's Cup was basically an afterthought; an award made-up relatively recently (20 years?) for the sole purpose of pretending that finishing with the best record in a league where the best teams rarely survive the 10 week playoff scramble actually counts for something.

[Guest Edgy DC]

My alternative Federation of American Baseball, once it gets off the ground, will feature regular season champions crowned as such, no playoffs, first division/second division/third division-type tiers, promotion and demotion, an in-season tournament modeled on the FA Cup, and a post-season 64-team tournament of teams representing the states of the Union.

[Frayed Knot]

Of course baseball started with the best record at the end of the year equals champion model. The creation of the World Series (which the NL champ simply opted out of in 1904) was more an 'our champ vs yours' kind of thing which only started becoming more of an internal 'playoff' only as the leagues slowly morphed together.