The Pecan Park Eagle

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!