Baseball's Misbegotten Season

The year of the asterisk finally reaches the play-off stage

The Cincinnati Reds won more games and lost fewer than any team in the major leagues this season. But all it got them was the homemade pennant pictured above and the feeling that this has been anything but a banner year for baseball. As the play-offs got under way last week, the Reds (record: 66-42) were at home watching the likes of the Kansas City Royals (record: 50-53) play on national television. "I'm disappointed," said Reds President Dick Wagner, "that baseball put marketing and merchandising ahead of tradition." Baltimore Orioles Owner Edward Bennett Williams, whose team sat out the playoffs, while five teams with worse records got into them, was more succinct: "The whole season was a terrible disaster."

To get the turnstiles clicking again after the seven-week players strike, baseball devised a unique "split-season" format. Teams leading their divisions when the strike began were declared "first-season" winners. They would meet the "second-season" or poststrike winners in mini-play-offs for the divisional championships.

What happened under this arrangement offended purists and casual fans alike.

With little incentive to play well, three of the prestrike leaders--the New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers--performed so indifferently that, in any other year, they would have missed the play-offs at season's end.

The exception was Oakland, which won the first half and very nearly the second, finishing five games ahead of the Texas Rangers over the full season.

Cincinnati was not the only team robbed outright.

The St. Louis Cardinals had the best overall record in the National League East yet missed the play-offs because the Phillies edged them by 1 1/2 games in the first half and Montreal finished one-half game ahead of them in the second. Griped Cards Manager Whitey Herzog: "The whole thing is unjust, a joke."

Most embarrassing, the Royals, twelve games out of first at the time of the strike, managed to get their act together well enough to capture the second-half crown. Perhaps fortunately for the game, Oakland eliminated the unworthy Royals in three straight last week. As it was, the play-off games had an oddly perfunctory character. "I should be excited, but I'm awfully relaxed," said Oakland Infielder Wayne Gross, after hitting a three-run homer in the A's opening victory. "Somehow this mini-series seems devalued."

Two clubs that finished with the second-best records in their divisions won play-off spots, as did three with the third-best records and Kansas City with its appalling fourth-place finish. In the playoffs, the Phillies lost twice to the Expos in Montreal, then evened the series at home on George Vukovich's tenth-inning homerun.

The Yankees were on the verge of eliminating the Milwaukee Brewers but fell into a deadlock after losing two straight in New York. Before play began Saturday night, the Houston Astros led the Dodgers in games, 2-1.

The strike and the misbegotten split season did incalculable damage to baseball's special rhythms and arithmetic. "Ninety feet between home plate and first base," offers Columnist Red Smith, "may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." Indeed, over the full 162-game schedule, baseball usually produces a hard truth: the best team wins. There are occasional flukes, such as the 1973 Mets, but never has a team succeeded by playing below .500, as Kansas City did.

As the season progresses, with wins and losses piling up by the dozens, baseball fans use certain statistical guides to assess their team's chances. Best known is what sportscasters refer to, in cathedral tones, as "the all-important loss column." Since rainouts or scheduling quirks produce discrepancies in the number of games each team has played at various points in the season, a knowledgeable fan is aware that the club with the fewest losses is in the best position, even if the standings indicate otherwise. But each team must play precisely the same number of games for this logic to hold, and that did not happen this year.

The Baltimore Orioles lost fewer times than any team in their division but came up emptyhanded, in part because other teams played more games. During the second half of play, Oakland had the fewest losses in the American League West but finished second because the Royals played four more games and managed three more wins.

Even more dismaying to fans, individual statistics were completely skewed by the truncated season. There were no 20-game winners (five pitchers had 14), no batters with 200 hits (Philadelphia's Pete Rose led with 140), and no sluggers with 100 runs batted in (Philadelphia's Mike Schmidt was tops with 91). Had the owners let the season continue in normal fashion after the strike, they would have had some sparkling pennant races on their hands.

Midway through the final week, four teams in the American League East would have been separated by a mere game. Except in the American League West, where Oakland would have clinched early, all the races would have been competitive almost to the end.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's office claims attendance was down only 6%, compared with the final two months of the 1980 season. Detroit's attendance was up, thanks to a 16-game home stand after the strike and the improbably brilliant play of its young team. But Milwaukee and Baltimore, in the thick of a pennant race, experienced declines. And teams such as the San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins, who were supposed to benefit at the gate by getting a fresh start in the second half, showed little improvement. They were lousy before the strike and stayed lousy after it.

Some of the fans returned during the playoffs, but by no means all. On Saturday there were 25,000 empty seats at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. At Milwaukee County Stadium, with a seating capacity of 54,000, only 35,064 and 26,395 showed up to watch the Brewers take on the Yankees. "The feeling is flat around here," said Taxi Driver Ken Potter. "We should be happy to be in the playoffs, but nothing means much in this Mickey Mouse season."

Nevertheless, Kuhn and many of the owners are wearing wide grins. Extra playoff games mean extra television revenues.

So what if the teams are playing night games in late October? Here's what: the temperature dropped into the 40s in both Milwaukee and Montreal last week. "I make no pretense of perfection," Kuhn told TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs. "But given the options, I think this system worked as well as any."

In their ineffable wisdom, the club owners are considering a similar format for next year. No split season, mind you, but a committee is studying the possibility of dividing each league into three divisions, with a wild-card club tossed in for play-off purposes. "I'm against gimmicks," said Yankee Boss George Steinbrenner. "But the idea of an extra tier of play-offs is a good one to keep interest up and more clubs involved in the pennant race longer. I'm for it, and I think the fans will come around to accepting it too." Maybe. And if they do, perhaps the next step, to add still further excitement, could be to move the pitching mound from its hallowed distance of 60 ft. 6 in. to, say, 66 ft., so the hitters get a break.

And then . . qed

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