IT’S MONEY IN YANKS’ BANK
Reward for best record? Thank our lucky Stars!
Thank goodness, our long national pastime nightmare is over. The AllStar Game is just the All-Star Game again, not a dopey, tricked-up way of determining home-field advantage for the World Series. All in all, there are more significant provisions in baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement, which players and owners signed off on Wednesday night, but putting an end to the All-Star Game farce was surely the best use of common sense.
And baseball didn’t fall back on its old, antiquated system, either, of simply alternating leagues for home-field advantage.
For the first time that reward will go to the team with the best record. Which, of course, is the way it should have been all along, but years ago MLB contended it needed to know in advance for logistical purposes, which was always just an excuse for not doing it right.
And then Bud Selig was so embarrassed by the infamous tie game in 2002, in his hometown of Milwaukee, that the then-Commissioner caved to pressure from FOX TV and put home-field advantage on the line.
Of course, that created all sorts of conflicts of interest. The game was meaningful, yet baseball still insisted on having every team represented in the All-Star Game, sometimes by players who didn’t deserve to be there.
And every year at least a few of the best pitchers in baseball were ineligible because they pitched on the Sunday before the AllStar break, two days before the game.
Meanwhile, managers continued to manage the game more to get everyone involved rather than simply trying to win the game.
And the players wanted to win, sure, but they recognized the game was more important in other ways. Three years ago Adam Wainwright admitted to throwing a cookie to Derek Jeter, as a way of honoring the outgoing Yankee legend, and then immediately had to insist he was only kidding when it blew up into a controversy.
So now it can go back to being the exhibition it should be. Players will still try to win, and indeed the new agreement calls for a sizeable payday for the winners, but now it can be more about a celebration of the sport.
People never watched to see who won the game anyway. People watch for big moments, whether it was Matt Harvey starting at Citi Field, pitching to the likes of Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera for the first time, or celebrating legends like Jeter, Mariano Rivera and David Ortiz in recent years.
So kudos to Commissioner Rob Manfred, who didn’t feel beholden to Selig in making sure this change was made.
Of course, Manfred didn’t get everything he wanted in this new agreement, especially regarding improved pace of play, which he has made clear he feels is vital to keeping young fans interested in baseball.
Most glaringly, nothing was done to address expanded rosters in September, which has become a major albatross on games. Because managers now match up with lefties and righties out of the bullpen more than ever, at times they used extra relievers this past September to turn games into unwatchable marathons.
There was a proposal at one point of adding a permanent 26th roster spot in exchange for some type of limit to rosters in September, but the Players Association was against it because of potential major league service time lost for call-ups, and the two sides couldn’t agree.
An MLB source on Thursday said both sides recognize the need for change, and believe the subject will be revisited during the course of this new, five-year CBA, but the system will stay in place at least for 2017.
That’s a major failure in the negotiations, but most important, of course, is that the two sides recognized the need to get a deal done. In the end, there were compromises on both sides involving luxury-tax penalties and caps to international spending, but there was nothing in the agreement that amounts to radical change.
So the business of baseball continues this winter, and next season teams will know that posting the best record guarantees them of home-field advantage not just in the league playoffs but the World Series, too.
What a concept.