</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Steve Wagner:
<strong>Baseball should (but never would):
- Play more Doubleheaders to shorten season</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Even with the extra round of playoff thanks to the wildcard, baseball actually has the third longest season of the four major professional sports in North America.
If you count from the start of the regular season to when the playoffs are concluded, the NHL has the longest season, at some 8.5 months. The NBA is close behind in second place, at around 8 months. MLB comes in third, with a season that is just under 7 months long. The NFL has the shortest season, with only 5 months between the first regular season game and the playing of the Super Bowl.
Of course, how long a season
feels versus how long it
actually is is another story entirely.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Philetus:
<strong>Contrast that to the last pennant race: 1993. Braves and Giants. 104 wins to 103. And no safety net. No talk of, "Well, we weren't good enough to win the division, but there is something waiting for us too." They weren't good enough, they went home. Was it bad luck that the Giants played in the only division in baseball that had a team win 104 games? Sure was.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">It was more than just bad luck. It should be remembered that the divisional structure in 1993 was in fact arbitrary and not particularly fair.
Why? Because in 1993 the leagues played a balanced schedule. Teams played more games against non-divisional opponents (84) than they played against divisional opponents (78). As a result the divisional structure was actually meaningless. It would've been more fair to have had only a single division and simply taken the top two teams.
The
only time a divisional structure has any genuine meaning is when teams play a majority (and more properly a solid majority) of their games against their divisional opponents.
If this is not the case, then the divisional groupings are purely arbitrary and of little value other than for show...
<small>[ 05-12-2002, 04:12 AM: Message edited by: Le Grande Orange ]</small>