It's a mad, mad, mad, mad sport. | Proudly Pinstriped

12:04 PM ET 10.23
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Baseball is a funny sport. It's nearly impossible to predict, given a certain roster of players, how a team is going to fare over the course of a season, or from one season to the next. Sports like basketball and football, where the meat of the impact is shared by a fairly small group of players, are much easier to make guesses about. Anyone surprised by the Patriots? The Colts? Think the Celtics are going to tank? Don't count on any big surprises. Even my beloved Cowboys showed signs of greatness last last year, so no one should be shocked they're doing well in a lousy conference. But baseball is different. Take the Red Sox. Champs in '04, imploded in '06, there again in '07. Take the Cubs. Good two years ago, terrible last year, playoffs this year. Take the Rockies. Mired in 4th place all year, streaking into the Series now at 21-1 over the last month. The success of the wild card teams may be the best proof of baseball's refusal to be figured out. A lot has been made about how often the wild card team wins in the postseason, despite having to play on the road, despite NEVER being the best team in the league, etc. But the numbers are truly startling: Baseball began its wild card format in 1995. In the thirteen seasons since (incl. '07), there have been 26 wild card teams. In that time, nine have made the World Series, and four (could be five)have won it. Football began its wild card format in 1970, and have added add'l wild card teams along the way. There have been a total of 156 wild card teams. In that time, only eight have made it to the Super Bowl, and four have won it. Baseball: 35% of wild card teams make the Series; 15% win it. Football: 5% of wild card teams make the Super Bowl; less than 3% win it. And everyone says that football, with its salary cap, is the sport with more parity. But there's actually a lot more parity, measured by the postseason, in baseball. It's baseball that's had seven champions in seven years (and maybe eight in eight), not football. It's baseball that didn't have a single team under .400 or over .600 in the regular season, not football. We can argue about managers, argue about big free agents, etc. But the outcome of this game is just harder to predict than all that. As a Yankee fan, I wonder: Does Torre matter? Does A-Rod matter? Are the Yankees a better team with one? The other? Neither? I really don't know. And here are the Rockies in the Fall Classic. No one knows why they played in September the way they did. No one can point to a big trade, a change in management or any other factor. They're just a bunch of young guys who happened to click. There are a couple of dozen other baseball teams that built themselves on the same blueprint. But their seasons all ended about a month ago. They'll all look at the Rockes and try to do what they tried to do, but they won't find an answer. It's a funny game, isn't it?

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October 23, 2007 12:13 PM ET

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Great Work. I don't think I've heard it better anywhere else. Too bad you're not a Dodgers fan.

Hawkdriver13

Savannah, GA

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October 23, 2007 12:15 PM ET

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Gary Jules would be proud.

PeavyFan's back?

Chula Vista , CA

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October 23, 2007 12:28 PM ET

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Got to agree that baseball is indeed a strange sport. One season you are the World Series champs and the next season you can't even smell the postseason.

J. HOVA: BROOKLYN

Brooklyn, NY

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October 23, 2007 12:37 PM ET

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Thanks, Hawkdriver.

No other sport provides the ups, downs, disappointments and heartbreaks, because no other sport is as vulnerable to dumb luck as baseball.

Now we didn't need Dane Cook to tell us that, did we?

Yankee64

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October 23, 2007 01:26 PM ET

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You trying to get Rick Reilly's job? Well written, it shows that whatever you do for a living, you should write on at least a part-time basis.

PK812

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October 23, 2007 01:34 PM ET

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Thanks, PK, you've found me out. I'm in advertising.

Yankee64

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October 23, 2007 01:51 PM ET

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Enjoyed this thorougly. Maybe I can send this to some of my football fanatic friends that think the NFL was handed down from the gods. (I love the NFL to, but the MLB pwns)

Mac is the Demon of…

Fort Hood, TX

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October 23, 2007 02:55 PM ET

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I think the game is so damn nearly perfect that it withstands assaults from mad-dog owners, superstar divas, drug-abusers, blind commissioners, and just about everyone else. It just keeps going and going.

I watched "Field of Dreams" with my 8-yr. old son (pictured left!) the other night. There's a line near the end about how throughout our modern history, the one constant has been baseball. There's something to that.

Yankee64

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October 23, 2007 05:20 PM ET

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Excellent work. I agree...you should be doing this and getting money for it. I love football, but at the moment, I feel like we're heading for an anti-climactic playoff run by either the Colts or the Pats and they'll thrash whatever the NFC offers up as its sacrificial lamb. In baseball, I may be crazy and just bitter that the Red Sox are in the series, but I really think the Rockies have a chance to pull this thing off.

CAR

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October 23, 2007 05:29 PM ET

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This was great fun to read. You were perfect on everything. And I agree. How can't you? Love your blogs, man.

Coletrain

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October 23, 2007 05:40 PM ET

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Kind words, all. Very much appreciated.

It's just a wonder to me that baseball works exactly the same way now as it did 100 years ago, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't do a damn thing about it.

Last stat:
Top batting average in 1875: .367
Top batting average in 2000: .372

I mean, you just can't make this stuff up.

Yankee64

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October 24, 2007 03:33 PM ET

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Great stuff,
I think the only real difference though is the sheer # of games played, but I think that plays into the magic of the game itself. Being a former college FB player I would think it is completely possible to have a play-off system for college FB that would include all confrences, and that may give that sport some greater parity, but then again it just comes down to the number of games played. No way a ny person could live through 160+ games of football in a year and ever walk upright. Hence, since your talking of a different beast, I think you hit the nail on the head for BB, but not so much for the improvement of parity for FB. All in All a fantastic arguement and I only wish my pt. load would've been down some this week so I could've read it sooner!!!

kbrin6

Tallahassee, FL

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October 24, 2007 09:43 PM ET

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Hey, kbrin.

The number of games is a factor. But look at basketball, which plays an 80+ game regular season, and still has teams that win more than 75% of their games. No baseball team has ever done anything close to that. It's the nature of the game; it just resists every genius who thinks he's got it figured.

And with regard to football, I agree that a 16-game season is a small sample, and that's why a team can win 90% of more of their games. But there are multiple rounds of playoffs, and the wild card teams just don't get through them. There is a much greater difference in quality across the NFL than in baseball. Again, it's the nature of the game.

You can load up a football or basketball team and greatly increase your odds of winning. But do what you will with a baseball team, and the gods will be laughing at you all summer.

Yankee64

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October 24, 2007 09:58 PM ET

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OK...ONE more stat to prove my point.

The 1961 and 1998 Yankees both won about 70% of their regular season games, the highest winning percentages in 125 years of recorded professional baseball.

But in the last 40 years, five NBA teams have won over 80% (including a ridiculous .878 95-96 Bulls team), and many more have won more than 70% of their regular season games. That's an 80-game season, not a short NFL schedule.

She's a slippery and elusive little minx, she is.