Baseball History: Why A Division Title Will Always Beat Being A Second Division Team

 

 

We are approaching October and the climax of the baseball season. And with it, as always will come the cry of that old species: the institutionalists.

The institutionalists are the kind of sports fan that is almost entirely exclusive to baseball. They are the most conservative people imaginable when it comes to sports. This might come as shock to Doris Kearns Goodwin or Bob Costas but even as someone who admires their work in baseball I can assure you that when it comes to talking about the game they love they will become as rabid an originalist as you will ever find working for The Heritage Foundation.

This is hardly new: when it ever it comes to any kind of change to baseball the lion’s share of fans have responded the way the 90 year old Republican voter is: they were against every damn one. (Except integration. That fantasy is left in the minds of certain sportswriters who work for the New York Post and even he won’t put it in print.)  I honestly think that given the chose between a change that might make baseball accessible to new fans and therefore have a future and baseball staying exactly the same and then dying out at the end of these fans lifetimes, these  lovers of the game would honestly prefer the latter.

Fans and people use such odds words to baseball they don’t use for other sports and indeed most pastimes: “cherished institution’  ‘the integrity of the game’, ‘the games glorious tradition’  I’ll be honest: whenever I hear certain announcers and columnists about pitch clocks or relief specialists destroying the game, I’m reminded of those Republican politicians who think getting rid of the filibuster would destroy the entire system of American democracy. There are more than  a few fans of the game and countless people who used to play it who talk about it as if were actually in the sepia photographs from a Ken Burns’s documentary rather than a game that is still being played. And they save their harshest blows the closer it gets to October and the World Series.

Few things will get fans of a certain age more vehement then the idea of the expanded postseason. They will talk about the good old says when the long season ended with two teams in the World Series with second place counting for nothing. They mention the same way they talk about how the postseason destroyed the pennant race, the other institution. I actually argued many years ago that the idea of the pennant race was a myth so I’d actually like to talk about another part of baseball history that’s an integral part of the game during the 20^th century  but is never talked about, certainly not with fondness.

The pennant race when it existed was almost always between two teams, three at the most. Baseball was divided between the haves and the have-nots well before free agency and there were rich teams and poor teams even within the same city. It was true in Boston during the first twenty years of the 20^th century; Philadelphia during the first thirty years of that same century and it was always true of St. Louis after Branch Rickey took over the Cardinals. When the Yankees took over their dominance of the American League in 1921 there were only one or two teams that could challenge their dominance and never for long. The National League had more parity but after a while it became a fight between St. Louis and New York and later on Brooklyn.

Even before the American League came into existence a phrase was prominent in baseball: second division. When leagues had eight teams, the first four teams in the league were in the first division and the last four were in the second division. This was given significance after 1918 when the leagues decided to give revenue from the World Series to any team that managed to finish as high as fourth place. That rarely helped many of the teams in either league manage to get a motivation to move higher and to many of those teams in both leagues after May, it was a pipe dream.

This part of baseball history will never be talked about it a Ken Burns documentary or any of the nostalgic HBO pieces we’ve seen over the decades. It doesn’t fit the standard of how good baseball was when it was played in the golden sunlight and on real grass. But for the majority of the fans of the game in so many cities across both leagues it was the reality – something that no one who lived in New York could comprehend.

And once you realize that your team is never going to get higher than sixth place and that any realistic pennant hopes will be dashed by Memorial Day at the latest the inevitable happens: attendance becomes incredibly low. Most teams in the pre-World War II era had no options then to play games to mostly empty fields in ballparks that were often crumbling. Wrigley Field is a beautiful ballpark and the fact that it manage to draw great attendance from the end of World War II until the end of the 20^th century not only without ever winning a pennant but not even coming close to it most of its time is a tribute to the Cubs fan.

Most teams of that era didn’t have that option. Few will write odes to Griffith Path, the Baker Bowl or Braves Field. With good reason. There was little fun to be had watching the games. By 1952 having one just two National League pennants in the 20^th century the Braves moved to Milwaukee. The Browns moved east to Baltimore. And the Senators as you will see went to Minnesota in 1961. Not wanting to leave the nation’s capital devoid of baseball, a new Senators team was founded. They did little better and eventually went to Texas. No one mourned these losses the way Dodgers fans mourned the move to LA but then again, it didn’t happen in New York so who cared.

And if this had to be grim for the fans, think of what it was like for the players of these teams bound to them by the hated reserve clause to have to play for empty stands for teams that never even came close to contending. George Sisler, Ralph Kiner and Luke Appling were among the greatest of all players but because they never got to the World Series few know their names. (Kiner is famous for his broadcasting career, not as much his superb play.) How Ernie Banks was so enthusiastic playing for a team that never won a pennant must have been harder than his demeanor suggested. It’s hardly a coincidence that Curt Flood decided to sue baseball when he was traded to the Phillies, a team that had won two pennants in its existence and was well on its way to setting a record for the most losses endured by any franchise in history.

Those who argue the 1950s was the Golden Age of Baseball almost solely live in New York. The Shot Heard Round the World was one of the greatest moments in baseball history to be sure but it's meaning has to be solely devoted to those who lived in New York at the time. For someone who grew up in Pittsburgh or Detroit during that same period they probably wouldn’t understand what the fuss is about and they have a point.

Now think about what has happened in baseball since the wild card race was introduced over the past thirty years:

-The Red Sox managed to break the ‘curse’ and in 2004 won their first World Series since 1918. In 2016 the Chicago Cubs finally managed to break their 108 year long curse after winning their first pennant in 71 years. Less noticed but just as significant was the fact that in 2005 the White Sox won their first World Series since 1917 after winning their first pennant since 1959.

-The Angels, having spent the first forty years of their existence without winning a single American League Pennan,t won their first World Series in 2002. The Houston Astros who had never gotten anywhere near the World Series in the first forty-three years of their existence won their first pennant in 2005. After switching to the American League they won a (tainted) World Championship in 2017. Last year the Texas Rangers won their first World Series in their 62 year history, stretching back to their birth as the expansion Senators in 1961. The Washington Nationals (formerly the Expos) won the World Series in 2019, the first World Championship DC has seen since the Senators won back in 1924.

-The Diamondbacks won the World Series four years after being created by expansion in 1998. The Miami Marlins won 2 World Series in the first decade of their existence.

-The Royals who had not won a pennant or contended for one since winning the World Series in 1985 won the American League Pennant in 2014 and the World Series in 2015. The San Francisco Giants, who’d won three pennants since they moved there in 1958, won three World Series in five years.

For all the arguments of what all the wild card berth has done to hurt the game no one talks about  what it is has done to help it and that’s offer hope in a way that baseball really hasn’t for so many smaller teams across the league in a way they never did during the years of two eight team leagues and not much more during the era of divisional play. Yes rich teams do win and do get further – the Yankees and Dodgers are prime examples of this and they may very well end up facing off this October in the World Series – but teams have hope that is less futile then it was for much of the twentieth century. Yes there are still wretched teams – the White Sox this year demonstrated that to a huge extent -  but at the very least the weaker teams across Major League Baseball can at least hold on to hope for longer.

And it gives the possibility for what has always made baseball a great sport: the possibility that anything can and will happen. On August 1^st the Detroit Tigers were in a distant fourth and looked to be facing a lost season. During the next two months they had the best record in all of baseball and clinched a wild card spot to grant them a place in the postseason for the first time in a decade.

We see variations of this playing throughout almost every division to an extent. The Yankees spent much of the summer in a horrible slump after a hot start looking like they were going to repeat last year’s collapse. Then in August and September the team got hot and on Thursday clinched the AL east over the Baltimore Orioles.

The San Diego Padres which collapsed after a promising 2022 season, have rebounded to make the wild card race in 2024. The Milwaukee Brewers won the N.L Central for the second consecutive year. Both teams have a chance to win the first World Series in their existences.

Other teams have another chance to make their own impact. The Baltimore Orioles have a chance to win their first World Series since 1983. The Cleveland Guardians could end up winning their first World Series since Harry Truman was going to lose to Dewey. And the Braves and the Mets are facing off for a chance to compete in the post season – and for the Mets in particular, it would be a hard fought war no one expected them to win.

Part of the lure of baseball, the thing that draws so many fans in year after year, is the possibility that is more likely here than any other sport: a chance a team, a player, a manager, will receive glory on its biggest stage. I fail to see how it is a bad thing if there is a better chance for more of those players to have a shot at this opportunity then before.

When he was inducted into Cooperstown Ted Williams told the masses that baseball gives every American a chance to succeed. Williams never played on a World Series winner and he considered that the most disappointing thing that ever happened to him. Baseball is a flawed institution – not even its most virulent defenders would argue otherwise  - but there is much that is good in it. And if it is to be like other American institution, it must offer more of a chance to the athletes who play it and the teams that root for them year after year to have a realistic chance at the World Series.

As a fan of the game myself I have always applauded the wild card because as someone who wants to see slights redressed and history made baseball has given me more opportunities to see that in the past twenty years than most fans in the twentieth century got in their lifetimes. I don’t live in Chicago, Boston or DC but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take in the same pleasure that their fans did when the historic World Series victories took place. That is what I love about the sport and that is why I love every October. That possibility. That hope. That wonder. I will take that over someone’s description of ‘integrity’ any day of the week and twice during this time of year.

Play ball.