My latest proposal for realigning MLB has about as much chance of getting off the ground as this poor fellow, but it's now baseball spring - the time for impossible dreams.
Some of you continue to take the Astros’ move to the American League pretty hard, as did I, when I first heard the news. Then something happened. Maybe its my age, but I woke up one morning at peace with the fact that this was just another one of those changes in life that most of us cannot control – even when we want to. Petitions of opposition, op-ed articles, grumbling among ourselves, public and private threats by some to never see another game at Minute Maid Park once the Astros go into the American League in 2013 weren’t going to stop it and – heck – even new owner Jim Crane had no power to stop it. Commissioner Bud Selig made agreement to the shift a condition on the final approval of his purchase of the team.
Fair or not, that’s powerful hardball business. What was Crane to do? He could have backed out of the deal on the grounds that he had signed on for the purchase of the Astros at $680 million dollars – and not for a move to the American League, but what would that have accomplished? It would have forced an already disengaged owner (McLane) to hold onto a drifting wreck while the long search and approval process began again – and this time, for someone who knew going in that agreement to the league move was part of the deal.
No dice. Jim Crane did the only thing he could have done that made sense for himself and the immediate and long-term prospects of the Houston Astros and their fans. He negotiated the price down to something closer to $600 million and agreed to the AL move in 2013. Now I find myself in gear to just go with the flow of what happens next. I still don’t like the “DH” rule, but how much control do we fans over that one either. And I sure don’t plan to spend whatever remaining time I have on this earth staying away from the ballpark, even though I shall continue to respect all of your rights to do so, if that’s how strongly you feel about it.
Maybe getting Bud Selig to retire would be a move in the right direction, but I doubt that all of this trend toward despotic decision-making is coming entirely from him. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a commissioner who behaves as Selig – nor did we just start seeing MLB team owners who work behind the scenes and through the commissioner to accomplish their own wishes for dominance.
A sad fallout is – if you get too involved in the politics and pay scale and players rights issues, you begin to lose that romantic attraction to the game you’ve had since childhood – and long before you ever grew up and ran into this same kind of crap in your particular field of endeavor. I don’t care what anybody else says about this issue because they are entitled to think anything they want too, but, for me, you have to keep some of that childhood illusion about the game alive to enjoy following “your” team as a transcendent emotional experience. I derive no joy from the art of assessing how each player’s annual performance affects his contract prospects for next year. To me, that’s the business side of baseball. And even though it’s real, I don’t go to games to watch a business do business. I go to games to watch my team and another play baseball.
After that wind up, my pigs-fly pitch today is simply another never-gonna-happen design for realigning the major leagues. You see, I enjoy the amusement of dancing with ideas that will never happen until a certain oinking creature takes wing into the same air with the eagles. In this model, the Astros still move west in 2013, but they stay in the National League. Meanwhile, a few other clubs shift leagues to help us find the best geographic arrangement for two 15-team leagues with three equal divisions of 5 teams each.
Ladies and gentlemen, Here’s my proposal for a batter geographic alignment of all clubs in 2013.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IN 2013: A Proposal Based Upon Geographic Common Sense:
National League Pacific
Los Angeles Angels
Oakland Athletics
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners
National League West
Arizona Diamondbacks
Colorado Rockies
Houston Astros
Los Angeles Dodgers
Texas Rangers
National League Central
Chicago Cubs
Kansas City Royals
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins *
St. Louis Cardinals
American League Atlantic
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
American League East
Atlanta Braves
Miami Marlins
New York Mets
Tampa Bay Rays
Washington Nationals
American League Central
Cleveland Indians
Chicago White Sox
Cincinnati Reds *
Detroit Tigers
Toronto Blue Jays
* 2/23/12: After due consideration, I’m taking the posted suggestion of Bob Hulsey, one now also seconded by a post from Greg Lucas, and am switching the Cincinnati Reds and Minnesota Twins from their original placements as a move that makes more time zone sense. Everything else stays the same. The change also opens the door for inter-divisional rivalries between the Indians and Reds in the AL CENTRAL and the Brewers and Twins in the NL CENTRAL.
– Thanks guys!
Tags: MLB Realignment 2013
The Pecan Park Eagle 
February 22, 2012 at 3:32 pm |
Bill ,I like your realingnment of the major league clubs,,,it makes sence, that’s why it will never be considered by Selig .
February 22, 2012 at 3:37 pm |
That works for me except that the Reds become the only National League team in the Eastern time zone, subjecting them to a ton of 10 p.m. start times. I’d say swap them with the Twins who could better adjust to the N.L. Central and pairs the Reds with the Indians.
I’d also swap the Dodgers and Mariners. The Dodgers have too much history with the Pacific teams and, while the Mariners are a good distance away, they don’t have the attachment to California teams that the others do.
I respect your opinion on the league switch but I just can’t follow. Ultimately, I’ll either find another National League team to root for less passionately or I’ll just give up enjoying baseball.
February 23, 2012 at 8:12 pm |
Bob –
I’m going to make that Minnesota-Cincinnati shift you suggested and give you credit for the amendment – with an assist to Greg Lucas for seconding the motion. It just makes too much sense to ignore.
February 22, 2012 at 4:12 pm |
I agree with Bob on his revisions for the Reds placement , my one adjustment would be keeping my Tampa Bay Rays in the same division as the Yanks and Red Sox, they were a constant headache for these overpaid teams all last year, and will be for years to come.
February 22, 2012 at 7:23 pm |
Bill, a very well stated case to not lose sight of the forest for the trees. To me it’s quite simple – You either love your hometown team or you don’t. Punishing them because of something the league forced them to do seems akin to blaming a kidnapping victim. Ultimately, those who abandon the Astros have a perfect right to do so, but they will forever be the poorer for it.
February 22, 2012 at 8:27 pm |
I appreciate Mike’s “kidnapping” analogy. However, as I see it, we fans are the kidnapping victims, and people are now telling us we must accept what happened and even appreciate the wonderful new life we have been given. That didn’t work out so great for Patty Hearst, but, If you can do that, I respect your willingness to accept what has been forced upon you. As for me, I’m reminded of the words of the old New Yorker cartoon: I say its spinach, and I say the hell with it.
February 22, 2012 at 11:54 pm |
Far better the Astros become a derilect team with a disinterested owner playing true baseball in the National League, than being in the American League where they do not play baseball. What use is success if it comes at the price of not playing baseball?
Sooner or later, MLB would have either given up on the idea of balancing the leagues, or yield to the players’ union pressure and select a different victim.
No one put a gun to Crane’s head to take a $70m bribe to sell the city, the fans, and our 80+ year NL heritage down the river.
February 23, 2012 at 2:09 am |
Darrell –
I wish you could have been around early enough as a fan to see what “true baseball” was played like under mostly derelict owners for fifty years. The St. Louis Browns needed more followers with little concern or hope for winning.
Brownie fans were a tight, but dedicated band of witnesses to more losing seasons and the sale of any player with talent just to pay the rent that any other pure baseball club probably has ever seen. The problem with all those Brownie fans was best summarized in remarks by the man who won 20 games for them in 1951 when the team lost over 100 games and finished dead last in the AL.
“Our fans never booed us,” Ned Garver says. “They wouldn’t dare. – We outnumbered ’em.”
Jim Crane didn’t sell Houston down the river on the AL move. Bud Selig did. Had Crane backed out, MLB would have either found another buyer who would accept the AL move – or barring a quick suitable find – they would have paid McLane to do his derelict owner driftwood plan in the AL in 2013.
That being said, once 2013 arrives, I have a right to go watch my hometown club play AL ball – and you, my son, and the others who feel as you both do – have a right to treat it as the end of the world for “real baseball” in Houston.
Maybe it’s my age, but I don’t think that’s all of it for me. – I can’t abandon big league baseball and simply decide to go care about any club that doesn’t, in some way, wear the word ‘HOUSTON” across the jersey heart plate. On the other hand, I am not willing to shut Houston baseball out of my life in 2013, if I’m still here, just because of the dad gum DH rule and the AL move that Bud Selig, not Jim Crane, has forced upon us.
Who knows? If I can make the change to AL baseball at my age, maybe I’ll finally be able to give eating crawfish a shot for the first time – and that would be an even bigger personal challenge for me than developing tolerance for the DH. You see, I grew up thinking of crawfish as nothing more than cockroaches with claws.
February 23, 2012 at 1:37 pm |
I disagree. I’m in the camp that says Crane could’ve said “no… I won’t buy the team with this coercion” and gone ahead and queered the deal and everyone could have pointed to Selig’s hypocrisy. It’s the Brewers who should’ve moved. My guess is if Crane had said “hell no” and with McLane whining Selig would’ve backed off. I certainly don’t blame the players and they will suffer, albeit for only a brief time, by reduced fan interest. At the end of the day, the players don’t care which league they play in as long as they get paid. They’ll follow the union which likes the bush league because of the DH. My interest and money will go to St. Louis. Furthermore, If the Chronicle had decent beat writers like they had 40 years who appreciated the history of the game there would’ve been a greater protest. I also agree with Kleinworth’s notion that the team name should change with the move to the minor leagues. They aren’t the Astros anymore anyway. McLane saw to that when he put the stupid train theme into the new ballpark. And BTW, get rid of those tacky Chik-Fil-A Fowl Poles…that really is bush league…oh, ok, they are going to the bush league.
February 23, 2012 at 2:30 pm |
Bill, I like your re-alignment. You kept teams 50 miles separated in different leagues. I do agree the Minnesota-Cincy switch might work better for time zones, but everything else looks good. Your new NL West is better than the current AL West with Texas, Houston and Colorado involved for time zone purposes. As for the DH? More and more younger fans have played with it all through their amatuer careers and find the NL “unusual.”
February 23, 2012 at 3:29 pm |
Does anyone know of another occasion when a league forced one of its most successful teams to change leagues to accommodate some inexplicable business plan? Perhaps it was done in the late 19th Century, and in some of the minor leagues, but never at this level. We really cannot blame either McClane or Jim Crane–with the concentration of power in the Commissioner’s office (Bud Selig apparently has a lifetime appointment) and the elimination of the League presidents, such despotic acts are likely to become more common. What is intolerable is the failure of MLB to justify this move, and its failure to make any attempt to explain the move to the club and its fans, and to apply this power at a time when the club was most vulnerable.
Well, as they said in Casablanca, “we’ll always have Pujols”.
February 23, 2012 at 3:39 pm |
When Bud Selig and MLB decided they were going to force a team (other than his beloved Brewers) to switch to the AL, you have to figure they took into account the reputation Houston fans in general have of being dispassionate and not particularly enthusiastic about baseball in general, and about their team in particular. They probably figured they could do what they wanted to Houston, and while a few dedicated fans would be extremely upset, the majority would just shrug and say “so what,” and Bud and MLB would get away with it. And that’s exactly what’s happening. If you disagree with my reasoning on this, I would simply ask you how you think fans of the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Phillies, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants etc etc etc would react if they were forced to change leagues. The simple answer is – they would go crazy, and yet here in Houston we just shrug and say, “oh well,” It may be a cynical view, but I think its clear that Bud and company had Houston pegged exactly right when they made their decision.
February 23, 2012 at 8:11 pm |
“Does anyone know of another occasion when a league forced one of its most successful teams to change leagues to accommodate some inexplicable business plan?”
Tony, when the NFL and AFL merged 3 of the most prominent teams in the NFL wound up in the newly-formed AFC. I don’t know if they volunteered or were hi-jacked in some manner, but the deed was done. I probably would have hated that if I had been a fan of one of those teams, but as an outsider I admired those teams’ willingness to make that move.
Bill (and Bob), While it makes sense to move Cincy, imagine the irony of THAT move to the AL.
The change I’d suggest is to swap Pittsburgh and Miami — to get the Pirates out of the strongest division and to impose a bit more travel time onto the big boys in that division. I’d opt for Miami over Tampa Bay due to Tampa’s relationship with the Yankees.
February 23, 2012 at 10:47 pm |
Tom: Thanks for this reminder. The NFL has always been cold blooded, which is charming in a raffish way. And of course, a few years after the switch, the AFL was generally superior to the old NFL. However, both leagues played with the same football and the same rules, and all teams divided the national television money on an equal basis.
March 3, 2012 at 9:13 pm |
whoever came up with this should be taking medication
it moves way to many teams around leagues, and you cant just move a whole bunch of national league teams to the american league, and vice versa, different rules in different leagues, tradition, it just isnt practical, and you might as well name it the eastern and western conferences, and theres a reason baseball hasnt used that premise, its simply retarted.
the actual realignment plan makes a hell of a lot of more sense, at least in the eyes of sensible baseball fans.