| Fair Play: Baseball Playing Numbers Game with Cubs | ||||
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I’ve never been a big fan of stealing from the poor. I’m rooting for Tibetan monks to pull off a big upset over China. And just once I’d like to read about a baby harp seal clubbing a hunter.
Like most Americans, I simply want a fair fight. Which isn’t happening on Chicago’s North Side. Despite last year’s renovations at Wrigley, the Cubs aren’t playing on a level playing field. That’s right. For the past 10 years, baseball has been throwing spitballs to the longest-losing big league team in sports history and getting away with it. The Cubs aren’t just a tortoise running to first base—they’re a tortoise running to first base with its shoelaces tied. And it all comes down to basic arithmetic.
*Rich Barnes burned his Cubs cap for good on December 9th, 1992. But he maintains his sense of fair play.Becoming a first place team in their division is mathematically more difficult for the Cubs simply because they share their division with more teams. Forget what the experts say. The National League Central is the deepest division in the game. Baseball, like so many Cubs teams of the past, lacks a balanced lineup. And it just ain’t fair. No major professional team sport in America sanctions the inequality that baseball does. The National Football League has it figured out: 32 teams in eight divisions of four teams each, with each division winner earning an automatic playoff spot. The NHL and NBA get it: 30 teams in six divisions of five teams each. Only Major League Baseball manages an “F” in arithmetic: 30 teams divided by four divisions of five teams, one division of four teams, and one “Kick Me” division of six teams. The NL Comedy Central. The overcrowded home of the Cubs. Consider the irony. The most statistically-crazed game in sports can’t add. A game in which batting averages are sometimes measured in the thousandths of a percentage point, can’t tell a five from a six. A sport played by men making eight-figure salaries can’t solve a single-digit equation. What does a full count really mean if the people playing the game can’t count? You don’t need a Shawon-O-Meter to figure out that the four teams in the American League West have a 25% chance of winning their division. And it doesn’t require an umpires’ conference to determine the five teams in each of the other four divisions have a 20% chance of winning their respective divisions. But quick: All things being equal, what chance do the Cubs have of winning the N.L. Central? If you said 16.6%, you probably know what a 9-2-6-3 double play is. Statistically, N.L. Central teams, including the Cubs, have an 8.4% less chance of winning their division than the Seattle Mariners have of winning the A.L. West. The Cubs also have a 5% less chance of winning their division than the Colorado Rockies have of winning the N.L. West, the Atlanta Braves the N.L. East, the White Sox the A.L. Central, or the Baltimore Orioles the A.L. East. Who says you can’t steal first? Think about it. The Cubs (100 years without a World Series championship), Astros (46 years), Brewers (38), Pirates (29), and Reds (18), all have a statistically 5% less chance of winning their division than the New York Yankees (26 World Series titles) have of winning theirs. The defending champion Boston Red Sox have a numerically easier path to a World Series than “the Loveable Losers.” Holy tipped cow. This isn’t to say that if the Cubs were in a two-team division, they would win it. And as St. Louis proved in 2006, N.L. Central teams can win the World Series. But statistically speaking, the cards are stacked against them. Why this imbalance persists is more mysterious than the composition of a pushcart hot dog. Especially because it’s so easy to fix. The simplest solution would be to move Houston from the National League Central (where it doesn’t belong anyway) to the American League West. A better idea would be to transfer the Astros to the N.L. West (thus maintaining their deeper National League pedigree) and move the lesser-rooted Diamondbacks or Rockies from the N.L. West to the A.L. West. Fair ball! A balanced lineup of two leagues with six divisions of five teams each. So why hasn’t this happened, Cub fans? Maybe it’s because cold statistical truths lack the mystique and romance of goat curses and black cats and evil spells. Why let facts get in the way of legends? No, it has to be that damn goat. Believe what you will. But while Cubs management sits around waiting for the planets to align, maybe they should ask baseball do some realigning of its own. Because the fact is, numbers, unlike Major League players under oath, don’t lie. And in this, the 101st year of futility for the Cubs and their faithful, it’s time to level the playing field. It’s time to make this fight a fair one. Maybe Leo Durocher was right when he famously remarked “Nice guys finish last.” But it seems to me that everyone—nice, nasty, or somewhere in between—deserves an equal chance to finish first.
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