Here's to the wild cards

Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, has convinced his owners and the players to add an extra wild card team to the playoffs, so now five teams per league will qualify. Not only is this terrific for the fans, but Selig also wisely managed to make it so that the wild card teams engage in a one-game showdown for the privilege of being the team that joins the three division winners in the battle for the league championship.

I have just the old-fashioned word for this new-fangled development: nifty.

But, as we might expect, the diamond fundamentalists have thrown a conniption fit. It's simply not fair, not the American way, to play 162 games and then have your fate decided by one lousy itty-bitty game.

Well, here's the answer: while regular seasons in any sport are, by virtue of their great length, pretty fair, playoffs are not meant to be fair. They're meant to be popular. These are games they're playing, my friends, not mathematical equations they're proving. If all playoffs did was validate the winner of the regular season, then what would be the point? For my money, it would be even better if there were even more playoff teams and more playoffs that were just one game, winner take all. It's more exciting, and, face it: the regular-season champion is rarely going to win anyway.

Just look at this past year. The Cardinals won the World Series even though they didn't qualify for the wild card till the last day of the season. But then, in this century, two-thirds of the World Series have included also-rans from the sanctified regular season. The New York Giants won the Super Bowl even though they'd finished the regular season at 9-7. The Kings took the Stanley Cup as the eighth and lowest seed in their conference.

Okay, the Heat did repeat as conference champions and win the NBA title, but then basketball is always the most predictable playoff spor because it involves the fewest variables: a handful of the same players, playing each other over and over again on standardized courts, customized, indoors with no weather issues.

The wonderful thing about a team sport is that it is so dicey that games are not decided by all those nerds who worship at the altar of statistics. Look right now, for instance, at the Baltimore Orioles, who are prominently in the expanded American League wild-card race despite being eighth in the league in ERA, eleventh in batting average, and worst in all the majors in fielding. That is, they can't pitch, hit or pick up the ball. They are not the beautiful orange and black bird of their name, but, rather, a version of the yellow and black bumblebee, which in common myth, aerodynamically isn't supposed to be able to fly, but does.

So the Baltimore Bumblebees still win games even though they're outscored overall. You know what? So did the New York Giants last year actually score fewer points than their opponents in the regular season, but then this underwater team got hot and won the Super Bowl.

Hooray for wild cards and one-game showdowns and second chances. Playoffs are nifty.

Published Aug 15, 2012

FRANK DEFORD

Frank Deford is among the most versatile of American writers. His work has appeared in virtually every medium, including print, where he has written eloquently for Sports Illustrated since 1962. Deford is currently the magazine's Senior Contributing Writer and contributes a weekly column to SI.com. Deford can be heard as a commentator each week on Morning Edition. On television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. He is the author of 15 books, and his latest,The Enitled, a novel about celebrity, sex and baseball, was published in 2007 to exceptional reviews. He and Red Smith are the only writers with multiple features in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Editor David Halberstam selected Deford's 1981 Sports Illustrated profile on Bobby Knight (The Rabbit Hunter) and his 1985 SI profile of boxer Billy Conn (The Boxer and the Blonde) for that prestigious anthology. For Deford the comparison is meaningful. "Red Smith was the finest columnist, and I mean not just sports columnist," Deford told Powell's Books in 2007. "I've always said that Red is like Vermeer, with those tiny, priceless pieces. Five hundred words, perfectly chosen, crafted. Best literary columnist, in any newspaper, that I've ever seen." Deford was elected to the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Six times at Sports Illustrated Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation's finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Deford has also been presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles; a Christopher Award; and journalism honor awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University; and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media," and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, "The world's greatest sportswriter." In broadcast, Deford has won a Cable Ace award, an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award for his television work. In 2005 ESPN presented a television biography of Deford's life and work, You Write Better Than You Play. Deford has spoken at well over a hundred colleges, as well as at forums, conventions and on cruise ships around the world. He served as the editor-in-chief of The National Sports Daily in its brief but celebrated existence. Deford also wrote Sports Illustrated's first Point After column, in 1986. Two of Deford's books, the novel, Everybody's All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis, have been made into movies. Two of his original screenplays have also been filmed. For 16 years Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, CT, with his wife, Carol. They have two grown children – a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught American Studies.

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