"Pure" Baseball

Let them play ball, and in the end everything will turn out right.

That's what the Gods of the Holy Diamond must have known when they laid out the new playoff format for the National Pastime.

Gone are the days of two-division leagues and a four-team playoff system that was the most exclusive of any major professional sport. Instead, the brisk autumn days of this baseball season have been marked by division races and wild card chases to fill the new eight-team playoff format.

Sure there have been some logistical kinks that had the cynics guffawing.

What, the two teams with the best records in the American League playing each other in the first round? What, the Yankees, with the third-best record in what used to be the American League East, coming within a run of reaching the League Championship?

Surely, cried the baseball purists, this is no longer the sport of Reggie Jackson, of Kirk Gibson, of Ray Knight and Joe Carter.

But really, it still is--the Diamond Deities have made sure of that.

The two league championships--one just concluded between the Braves and the Reds and one still in progress between the Mariners and Indians--feature the four teams that would have faced each other in the league championships of the old playoff format as well.

And what's more, in the course of eliminating the four "extra" teams from the revised playoff system, fans were treated to some of the more inspiring performances of the season.

Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson emerged as Big Game heroes from the Mariners' five-game series against the Yankees. But that honor could easily have gone to the Yankees' Rubin Sierra, Jim Leyritz or David Cone had game five turned out differently.

Would any baseball purist want to disown the memories of Leyritz's 12th inning, game-winning home run in game two? Or Griffey sliding into home with the game and series winning run in the 11th inning of game 5? No true fan would.

In the other American League series, the Red Sox had the imagination of Beantown fans running wild in the first game, taking an 11th inning lead against the heavily favored Indians.

But Albert Belle and Tony Pena, with two swings of their bats, brought the Curse of the Bambino crashing down on Fenway. And by the end of the series the Red Sox had another number to haunt them at night--13--thirteen straight post-season losses, dating back to games six and seven of the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets.

In the senior circuit the Braves, stifled in their last two trips to the Fall Classic, looked to the likes of Chipper Jones and Mike Mordecai to provide some positive October memories.

Jones ended game one against the expansion representative Colorado Rockies with a ninth-inning homer.

In game two, pinch-hitting Mordecai scaled the Rockies in the ninth-inning of game two with a game-winning hit of his own.

How could any fan, "pure" or not, suggest that these games were anything but baseball at its purest?

The Baseball Gods, in trying to atone for last year's sin, have provided fans this year with the best of both worlds: a handful of dramatic games in October and two league championship series pitting the teams that "should" be playing each other for a trip to the World Series.