The convoluted American League playoff scheme that could have occured had Cleveland lost yesterday did not occur as the Twins gave it to the Indians. However, Tampa Bay and Texas both won. They play one game to settle the issue today in Texas. Both teams will start left handers, David Price (9-8, 3.39) for the Rays and Martin Perez (10-5, 3.55) for Texas. “We’ll have to watch this one to see who wins,” said Nancy Pelosi, while lamenting the Giants (76-86) poor season.  Of course, the issue that will be settled today is just about who plays in the real Wild Card game in Cleveland on Wednesday.

If I were to hazard a opinion, I would give the edge to the Rangers based entirely on Joe Nathan, its closer. We’ll see.

The Pirates play the Reds tomorrow in Pittsburgh. The Reds will start Johnny Cueto (5-2, 2.82) and the Pirates will start Francisco Liriano (16-8, 3.02). Again, if I were going to hazard a guess here, I would flip a coin. (The flip just said Pittsburgh)

Where I have been focused on these wild card games,  the real fun starts with the Divisional Series, schedule here.

Some years ago, I was involved in discussions of playoff formats as the expansion of the major leagues would cause a change in league alignments and the force the creation of divisions. This is so no team would finish 12th (or now 15th) in the standings and more pennant races equals more local interest.

The creation of divisions, first East and West and then to East, West, Central, created the need for a WIld Card. or the non winning team with the highest winning percentage, so that two series could be played. That lead to the creation of a second wild card because Fox wanted another game.

The discussion I was involved in focused on who should play in the World Series. Some thought that the true league champions should play there and those were the two teams at the top of each league. The creation of divisions ended that argument, but now we have second wild cards eligible for the World Series. Maybe we have gone too far, but the money generated by broadcasts of extra games means this is permanent. The problem is that the extra games pushes the World Series into the second half of October. It is scheduled to end on October 31 this year and that is too far into the Fall to hold national interest as each sports league has its natural season and baseball games in late October just don’t work as well. World Series TV ratings illustrate this fact.

Nevertheless, I will watch them all as it is the greatest championship series of all, even though it may not reward the True league champions