Shame and sanctuary share space

To comment on the current state of baseball in a context eSports readers can appreciate, a few stories from Monday's edition of EMG tell the tale.

Two stories had subheads which said that the close of this year's regular season was exciting; yet, the stories themselves mentioned nothing about the end of the regular season and its September/early October climax.

The two stories either reviewed the entirety of the regular season, or previewed the entirety of the playoffs. But, a mention of the final week of the 2001 campaign was conspicuous by its absence.

Whether this was planned or not, I don't -- can't -- presume to know. However, I'll render the judgment that such a decision on the part of the authors was a stroke of brilliant salesmanship and analytical excellence, for nothing was really exciting about the end of this season, as has been the case with every other season in the wild card-era. Let's look at the particulars.

First, a brief look at the snooze-bar "races" in the American League. The idea that a team could get smoked by 14 games and coast into the playoffs, clinching a postseason berth with two whole weeks left in the season, would have outraged baseball people and sent shouts of "Cowards!" ringing through Major League dugouts but 10 years ago.

Today, that's exactly how the Oakland Athletics got into the playoffs. Gee, real fair to the Mariners, who toasted their rivals from the Bay Area.

As bad as that mockery of a travesty of a sham is from the junior circuit, it's the National League that had an even worse case of wild card insanity. In 1996, the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers were tied going into the final day of the season. Such a scenario used to be the stuff of legend, of epic "I was there" stories that resonate with grandchildren years later and knit together generations in the fabric of baseball, a tapestry made rich -- nay, defined -- by history.

But with the wild card era, the Padres and Dodgers treated the game like spring training, putting out youngsters and bench-warmers, because each team had clinched a playoff berth.

The past is prelude, and so on the final day of the 2001 season, the Houston Astros trailed the St. Louis Cardinals by one game when the two teams met at Busch Stadium. Ah, the historic deliciousness and dramatic drama of this game could have been something for the ages.

It was in 1964 that the Cardinals, seemingly dead and buried with but a week left to play, suddenly found themselves in the World Series because of an unfathomable collapse by the Philadelphia Phillies, known forever after as the Philly Flop.

Well, 37 years later, the Cardinals would have been in position to benefit from a "Houston Horror Show," a collapse that saw the Astros fritter away a 5.5-game lead with eight games left to play... except for ye not-so-olde wilde carde.

Yes, the evil of the wild card reared its ugly head again, but this time on two fronts: first, the game between the Astros and Cardinals was rendered irrelevant for postseason purposes, much like Pads-Dodgers in '96. But secondly, and much more importantly, the Astros' win, which created a flat-footed tie between Houston and St. Louis, was not followed up by a decisive one-game division playoff on Monday.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no National League Central Division Champion this year, just as there wasn't an American League Western Division Champion last year, when the A's and Mariners -- both ticketed for the playoffs under the wild card system -- didn't need to bother with a makeup game the A's should have played at Tampa Bay to fill out their 162-game slate.

Yes, late September (and this year, the first week of October) represents a source of shame, a shame connected with the organized commercial and political entity known as Major League Baseball.

Thankfully, however, we still can cling to the game played between the white lines. And while late Septembers might be bereft of meaning forevermore -- in terms of races, anyway; surely, many other special people and records gave September its juice this year -- at least October is still special, the sanctuary for true believers in the church of baseball.

In October Baseball, runs are undeniably at a premium, showcasing the game at its best.

In October Baseball, fans cheer foul balls for crucial second strikes in late-game at-bats.

In October Baseball, the wheels turn even more slowly, and a nation gets to realize how beautiful, how intricate, the strategy and craft of baseball really are.

In October Baseball, stadiums are packed and resound with spine-tingling electricity.

In October Baseball, late-inning games become all-time television classics, showing the best of a sport, but also the very best of the dramatic and entertaining medium that television is. The best, most cultured, most refined programs on FOX's prime-time lineup at any point in the year are its postseason baseball games. There is little doubt about the truth of this point among TV connoisseurs.

In October Baseball, all that is wrong about the wild card fades away against the background of everything that has made the game of pitch and catch, of hit and run, so special and magnetic since pro baseball was regularly played -- by the Cincinnati Red Stockings and others -- in 1869.

Let's just forget about the just-completed end of another wild card-era season. Let's move forward to the restorative power of October Baseball.