Bud Selig has not done much right in his tenure as commissioner of Major League Baseball.
He has overseen the first-ever cancellation of the World Series and the first ever tie in the All Star game (in his former team's venue, no less). His tenure brought the steroid era to a feverish pitch and damaged the hallowed records of baseball, as well as the worst disparity of the haves and have-nots the game has ever experienced.
To this day, he refuses to consider instant replay, even after a perfect game was spoiled by a bad call. He claims there is insufficient demand for it, but it was even used efficiently and effectively in the Little League World Series because most fans understand that getting the call right is important even in games being played by pre-teens.
What is he afraid of? Baseball being slowed down? It is the slowest game on the planet this side of golf! Would we even notice a one-minute pause two or three times a game?
But this year, Selig got a stroke of luck to help his game when three playoff races came down to the final day. He got another when none of them had to go into the antiquated one-game playoff that could have required one team to play two games to determine their position when every other league could have decided that by simple tie-breakers.
While the thought of a one-game playoff between the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres was intriguing from the position of fans (please see my piece on NetDugout for coverage on this match-up), it made no sense.
The Padres have dominated the Giants during the regular season, but in baseball, head-to-head sometimes means nothing...not even determining who hosts such a playoff, which is done by coin flip. Moreover, the two teams would have been tied with the Atlanta Braves for the wild card, too.
Ironically, in the AL East where such complications could not happen, a tiebreak was to be used to give the Tampa Bay Rays the division and the New York Yankees the wild card. There it would have made more sense to have a playoff as there was no other tie, but in its infinite lack of wisdom, baseball has it backwards and awards the division on tie-break only when there are no such complications.
Welcome to the convoluted mind of Bud Selig.
And as proof that it is better be lucky than good, the Rays, Braves, and Giants all won, the only combination that could avoid a single tie-break. But not before the possibility of one made baseball's final weekend intriguing.
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