Realign of Fire Jason Michael Barker

Realignment seems to be the hot topic of the day, so far be it from me to shirk the responsibility of giving you my thoughts on the subject, regardless of whether you asked for them or not.

The recent realignment proposal put forth by Bud Selig is, in a word, strange. OK, so it's hard to sum up the plan, or anything for that matter, in just one word. On the one hand, the National League looks great -- four divisions each containing four teams, thus keeping the purists happy by eliminating the Wild Card. The American League...not so much. Before we get into this any further, however, let's take a step back and look at the proposal.

The NL West would consist of four familiar teams: Colorado, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. If you're wondering what happened to Arizona, stay tuned. The Northeast is made up of Montreal, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. So far so good, and I've always thought the Pirates and Phillies should be in the same division, in sort of a "Battle for Pennsylvania"-type way.

In the Southeast we find Atlanta, Florida, St. Louis and Tampa Bay. There's our first league switch, with the Devil Rays coming over from the American League, and between you and me, St. Louis isn't all that far south or east. If you've been keeping track, you know that the Central would then be made up of Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston and Milwaukee.

The problems begin to arise in the Central and Southeast divisions. The Cardinals, for one, have already raised concerns about losing their rivalry with the Cubs, a bitter war for supremacy that runs much deeper than Sluggin' Sammy and Big Mac, or so they say. By exchanging Houston and St. Louis we both eliminate this problem and straighten things out geographically (Houston seems a much better fit in the Southeast than St. Louis).

We now come to the American League, where things aren't nearly so cut and dry. Under Selig's plan, the AL would retain its current three-division format. The kicker, however, is that the West and East would have four teams, while the Central would have -- wait for it -- six. Not only does that make the standings look ugly, but it means the AL would keep the Wild Card while the NL would not. The whole thing smacks of communism, frankly.

Perhaps it's not that bad. But still, the idea of having two radically different rules governing each league is more than I can stomach. Oh wait -- we have the exact same situation right now, thanks to a little thing known as the designated hitter. I've written on that topic before, and my basic premise still stands: either eliminate the DH entirely or add it to the National League. I don't care either way, so long as the two leagues are consistent.

Getting back to realignment, the "new" AL West would consist of Anaheim, Arizona, Oakland and Seattle. The Central is made up of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Minnesota and Texas, while Baltimore, Boston, New York and Toronto comprise the East.

If you're really averse to such unbalanced divisions, the simple solution is to move Cleveland to the East. Cleveland is, after all, the furthest east of any of the Central cities, and Ohio isn't all that far from New York. In the short-term, that might work just fine. In the long-term, however, I've got other ideas.

The reason realignment plans never seem to look quite right is fairly simple -- there are 30 teams in Major League Baseball, meaning you can't have the same number of teams in each league. To fix the problem, we simply need to add two teams to the mix, bringing the total to 32 franchises and allowing each league to have 16 teams. Further, both leagues would then have four divisions containing four teams each.

Now the question becomes: where should the new franchises be placed? I don't have an answer for that. A few years ago, there was no question where new teams would go: Phoenix, Colorado, Tampa Bay, and Miami. Those cities are now blessed with baseball. The two cities that immediately jump to mind are Charlotte and Indianapolis, although I have no idea how feasible either of those situations would be.

According to 1998 population data from www.infoplease.com, Indianapolis is the 13th-largest city in the country, and among cities without baseball, only San Jose and San Antonio are larger. Charlotte ranks 25th, and is one of the fastest-growing cities on the list. Coming in just ahead of Charlotte is another interesting possibility: Nashville. Further down the list, New Orleans and Las Vegas jumped out at me.

I don't see baseball expanding anytime soon, however, because doing so would be admitting the industry is financially viable. It's much easier to sit back and say that all the teams are losing money, and that some (Montreal and Oakland come to mind) are losing so much they should just fold.

Instead we'll be stuck with a nice format in the NL, and a rather bizarre one in the AL. But that's baseball, and I suppose it shouldn't be all that surprising.

about the author

Jason Michael Barker is the inventor of the FlailAway, a device that sharpens your batting skills by shooting baseballs at you from five directions at once. Send head injury claims to jmb@strikethree.com.