The evolution of the baseball playoffs- where now even losing teams now have a shot at winning- tells us a lot of about our culture. From the upbringing of our children, through our skewed vision of success as adults, we're a culture that is increasingly permissive of "averageness." How will this fare in a world where competing cultures are forced to be much more crude in their determination of winners and losers?
Baseball analogies are almost always worthless. They foolishly assume that factors such as "wanting it more than the next guy" and "being due" for a home run are somehow mathematically relevant to a game at any given moment on the field. But this doesn't mean that what happens in baseball is never analogous to our lives. Something has been brewing in the evolution of America's pastime in recent years that tells us a lot about the state of our entire culture.
Losers are now winners.
Through the manipulation of schedules and the architecture of the playoffs, plus the creation of six small divisions and a wild card, Major League Baseball has engineered a system where nearly every team- even the losing ones- is still in the playoff race in the final weeks of the season. This year we came close to having the first team with a losing record make it to the playoffs. The San Diego Padres staved off that fate at the last hour. The last three "World Champions" have been teams that were not even the best in their divisions.
Baseball is allowing this for obvious reasons. As in other sports, the owners realized that expanding the playoffs to include more teams brings more people to the games. Fans don't seem to care much if the best teams don't always make it to the finals, as long as the team they root for has a shot at the championship.
This is not baseball's- or any sports league's- fault. Sports is a business. And fans seem content that the system is fair. The worst of the worst teams never reach the playoffs. There are losers in life, and they still get their just deserts.
However, when we start talking about the "average Joes" of the league, it gets touchier. Most average teams have excuses as to why they're merely average: injuries, bad management, not enough revenue generation, and so on. They feel that they deserve a shot at greatness. That's understandable. But why is it OK with fans?
- THE "GOOD ENOUGH" CULTURE -
This is a case where sports mirrors our culture as a whole. We've developed into a society that believes that "good enough" has the potential to be great, and that all past transgressions are forever forgivable, as long as we "do better next time."
Don't get me wrong- we're not heading toward a socialist culture, where everything and everyone is considered inherently and eternally equal, no matter what they do. We understand the nonproductivity of that. Ours is a more complex cultural condition.
We're trying to build some bizarre hybrid of fairness and greatness, where winners and losers still exist, but the titles are handed out a little more equitably. We're attempting to one-up Darwin. We loathe that, in reality, innate characteristics such as intelligence and physical ability actually trump things like "trying real hard," and "being your best."
While we can certainly change the rules of baseball along these lines, changing the rules of life is a little more of a precarious undertaking. But that's not stopping us from trying.
