Ask Woody
T.J.: Thanks for the thought, but nobody would even let me be the commissioner of Dempster-Dumpsters, those large mobile garbage containers invented by the late Knoxville, Tenn., businessman and politician George Roby Dempster. He died the year I was a freshman at the University of Tennessee, but I always think of Dempster when I see a dumpster fire.
Regarding the baseball schedule, I’d change it somewhat drastically. Division teams should not be playing each other 19 games a year. Does anybody want to watch the Rockies-Padres, Orioles-Rays or Marlins-Anybody 19 times? And even though baseball is cyclical, it’s unfair in divisions such as the American League East, in which the Yankees get to beat up on the Orioles 15 times, or in the American League Central, which always seems to have two or three crappy teams. And the Dodgers load up on the Rockies and Padres and even the Giants.
Under my plan, interdivision games against other four teams would be reduced to 13 – with three home-and-away series of three games and one of four – for a total of 52 games. The Red Sox and the Yankees, and the Cubs and the Cardinals wouldn’t be thrilled, but I don’t care. That’s almost a third of the season playing in the division, which is enough.
Then, teams in each league would play four-and-four series against the clubs in the other two divisions – 80 games. Finally, in interleague play, teams in the National League would rotate divisions in the American League – playing a three-and-three series vs. five teams in one division – 30 games.
There’s the 162-game schedule. The Yankees would play 13 games against the Red Sox, the Rays, the Orioles and the Blue Jays, eight games against the 10 teams in the other two AL divisions and six vs. National League West teams one season, the other divisions the next two.
Yes, one team would get an extra home again in the 13-game division system under normal circumstances. But baseball now is playing assorted games at neutral sites, and this is an ideal concept. Games could be played in Williamsport or Cooperstown or The Field of Dreams or in a minor-league park in Louisville or San Antonio, or in Mexico City or Hawaii, or London or Vancouver, or wherever. Many of these games could be played on opening day in warm-weather locales rather than in snowy Detroit or freezing New York and help make baseball more of a national and international game than the regional sport it currently is.
Players will balk about an added trip, so I’d schedule more true doubleheaders (perhaps a half dozen) to give the players more days off during a season that is too long, anyway. Fans would love a two-for-one doubleheader instead of those day-night makeup affairs.
And I’d put my friend Bob Costas in charge of the baseball world.
There’s your answer, T.J.
