Seaver’s Reds Did Not Make The Playoffs
Photo: Special to the NY Beacon
Photo: Special to the NY Beacon
By Joshua Garcia
Amid one to the strangest times in not only sports, but human history, professional sports leagues scramble to create some type of attack strategies going forward with their respective games. Innovation and retrospect become the first of the available lines of thinking and while Adam Silver and the NBA are in the core of their schedule, Rob Manfred and MLB were luckily able to stop the show in dress rehearsal.
Although under different circumstances, the 1981 Major League Baseball season was forced into an alternative format of games due to a work stoppage. 2020 baseball has been stopped to a halt from the Coronavirus, but in the early 80s disagreements between the league owners and player’s association came to a head in CBA discussions causing a walk out by players a mere 55 games into the 1981 season.
Finally in agreement on issues like compensation for small market teams losing free agents like Dave Winfield from San Diego to New York, the players eventually went back to work. In an attempt to make the newly commenced baseball season more interesting, competitive, and fair after the long layoff MLB decided to start with clean records when play resumed.
Essentially baseball would split the 1981 season into two separate seasons and the four division winners of each half would face each other in the playoffs for the 1981 World Series. Oddly, the season’s first game upon return was the 1981 All-Star Game, and with the 2020 AS Game set for July 14th, we may possibly see something similar in the future.
Using that blueprint, ideally a 92 game MLB regular season could be enacted starting June 1st where Major Leaguers can report to their spring training facilities and start to prepare for the MLB season around May 1st. Four playoff teams would emerge from the 100 game schedule which would feature 48 division games consisting of two, three game home-road series between each team and 44 non-division games comprised of two home-road series against every team in respective league. There will be no interleague play in 2020 allowing for shorter travel throughout condensed schedule, as well as recreate the old World Series sensation of only seeing AL vs NL with a championship on the line.
Other ideas have involved keeping the 162 game schedule as is and just pushing it back two months into the Christmas season. This is a rather absurd idea and it’s only intrigue involves using neutral site domes such as Marlins Park or Chase Field in Arizona with controlled climate during winter months creating a never seen before environment for the World Series.
Hesitation on the part of the owners and league should not be shared out of the fear of never going back to 162 games. In 2021 there is no reason why baseball should be any different than it always has, but desperate times call for desperate measures and a shortened schedule full of high level baseball will more than make up for two lost months to the baseball loving public.
Emphasis on shortening the schedule and adapting to the situations is unique to each league. Whereas MLB needs to regroup, the NBA already 60 games into its 82 game schedule should pull the plug and start with the playoffs if possible come summertime. Players on playoff teams when safe, should have a few weeks to prepare and once and for all decide the NBA champion for 2020.
NBA teams like the Portland Trail Blazers, New Orleans Pelicans, and Sacramento Kings all were on the verge of possibly making a playoff run, but all sit significantly below .500 and the Eastern conference has been decided for a month already, so there is little to gripe about. In 1981 the Cincinnati Reds who narrowly missed winning the division in the first half of the split season, by half a game which was never played, and despite having baseball’s best record overall at 66-42 failed to make the playoffs under the adopted season format.
It is a tragedy what happened to the 1981 Cincinnati Reds having MLB’s best record and having to sit home and watch their division rivals at the time represent the NL West in the playoffs. Said tragedy is the main reason for a contiguous 92 game MLB format and the reason why the NBA should forgo its regular season and head straight to the post-season. Everyone involved wants the health of the public, the sport they love, and themselves, these formats may be just the way to accomplish all three.
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