Joy Division

Matt Bruce

When I was a kid, the divisions and conferences of the National Hockey League had really cool names. I had no idea who Adams, Patrick, Campbell or Norris were, but their unfamiliarity actually made their namesake team groupings all the more interesting. If anybody in Oklahoma had actually known who these guys were, I could have even learned a lesson about hockey history.

Baseball's history is full of greats whose names should be universally recognized, and whose achievements deserve all the more commemoration. Major League Baseball also will probably expand soon. When it does, it will have 32 teams, 16 per division. Since 16 is divisible by four, rather than three, it follows that baseball will realign for convenience. Putting these things together gives me a grand scheme.

First we have to know where the expansion teams will go. Rumor has it that Portland is interested, with backing from software billionaires. This is convenient because a Portland team would give the American League a four-team division made up entirely of West Coast teams, booting the Rangers back to the Great Plains where they belong. Charlotte has made every effort to attract an existing team. So has the Virginia area, which may yet get the Expos, but it makes no sense to put an AL expansion team near Washington, D.C., almost in the Orioles' back yard.

So the divisions start to fall in place. As noted, Portland joins Anaheim, Oakland and Seattle. Chicago, Kansas City, Minnesota and Texas share a division stuck entirely in the Central time zone. The other eight AL teams should divide according to geography and competitive balance. Expansion babies Charlotte and Tampa ought not share a division. Since it makes sense to leave Boston, New York and Baltimore together, I arbitrarily choose to add Charlotte to that division.

We're left with Cleveland, Detroit, Tampa Bay and Toronto. Tampa Bay seems geographically out of place but fans of football's NFC Central ought to be used to that by now. Mind you, the two cities that lead the minors in attendance are Indianapolis and Buffalo, either of which would fit seamlessly into a Great Lakes quartet.

In the National League, the current 16 teams just reorganize from three divisions into four. The California teams obviously stick together, and I say that Arizona remains with them. This boots Colorado eastward , where the two closest teams are St. Louis and Houston. I round out that division with Chicago to preserve the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry. On the Eastern Seaboard it seems logical to put Pittsburgh with the Mets, Phillies and Expos, especially if the latter are in Virginia. After all, those four teams are the NL East of old, minus the Cubs and Cards.

Our remaining division is the geographic anomaly that gave rise to my idea for nomenclature. Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Florida are leftovers here. I toyed with a Gulf of Mexico division, putting Florida with the non-Pacific teams of the old NL West. The problem is that, for competitive balance, Atlanta, Houston and Cincinnati ought not be 3/4 of a division any time soon. Plus, on reflection, Milwaukee has something in common with the other cities: Henry Aaron.

The Aaron Division now contains the city where he spent most of his career; the team with whom he hit his record-breaking home run; the team against whom he tied the home run record; and a fourth Deep South team just for kicks, since Alabama probably won't join the Majors for awhile.

Of the greatest players in baseball history, who else deserves even further immortality? A new mural outside Fenway Park depicts five diverse baseball heroes including Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Jackie Robinson. Clemente and Robinson are both worth division names to me, though I'll readily hear arguments that the NL West ought to be renamed for Willie Mays instead. The last one almost begs to be called the Harry Caray Division but for dignity's sake we'll give the nod to Stan Musial.

An anomaly here is that all four NL divisions have been named after great hitters. This is not a problem, however, since four of the greatest pitchers of old are all members of the Junior Circuit. Naming a division after Cy Young may not be the best way to spread the naming wealth but I settle on him to establish the pitching theme. In any event, I want no part of the arguments that would happen between fans of Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, Mantle and DiMaggio. By happy coincidence, Bob Feller (Indians), Lefty Grove (Athletics) and Walter Johnson (Senators, as they evolved into the Twins and/or Rangers) all "belong" to different divisions under my realignment plan.

So we move to eight divisions, unbalance the schedules again, cater to the fans of two more major league cities and give props to the heroes of old. What more could you want? Interleague play? Maybe in another column. Playoffs? You mourn the death of the wild card? Ah, but the innovations continue.

Sending only the first place team from each division could screw some successor to the 1993 Giants, only worse because there would no doubt also be a division with some barely .500 default champion. So we give the wild card hopefuls one chance and one chance alone: Beat the weakest division winner in a single game at its home park, and you replace that team in your league's four-team playoff series.

Tie-breaking games have made television history (well, at least ESPN history) in the past few years, between the 1998 Cubs-Giants battle and the 1995 Angels-Mariners tilt. Fans and TV executives alike should clamor for a system that gives you two one-and-out games a year without posing any real threat to the elite teams of the league. We can reserve to rotisserie commissioners the burning technicality of whether this special game counts as part of the "regular season."

So there you have it, the best system that Major League Baseball will probably never consider. You can, though, and you can start all kinds of bar room melees over who really deserves a division name.

about the author

Matt Bruce no longer lives in the Fenway Park neighborhood, so he no longer feels guilty about not being righteously indignant about the planned new Fenway. Offer tips on how "Not In My Backyard" can extend across town at mb@strikethree.com.