As the CBA expires in December, I am sure there are a number of very important issues that will be facing the players and owners during the negotiation process. Therefore, in the interests of allowing you and Mr. Fehr to solve some real problems (revenue sharing, luxury tax, and I believe there has been some talk about performance enhancement thingies or something), I have decided to solve one of the issues that you most certainly should address. Realignment. Therefore, I present my realignment plan for 2006.
NL East
Boston (this puts a traditional NL city back in the really crappy NL)
Philly
Florida
Baltimore
Washington
NL Central
Cincy
Hous
Milw
Cubs
Atlanta (well, they have been in the West and the East before, so it only makes sense they play in the Central now)
NL West
SD
SF
LA
Colorado
Arizona
AL West
Oak
Sea
LA
Texas
AL Central
Chi
Minnesota
Tex
KC
AL East
Tor
TB
Det
Cle
Al North East
NY Yankees
NY Mets
So there you have it. Maintain the unbalanced schedule, with each team playing approximately 50% of the games against the teams in their divisions. The WC is eliminated in the AL, but you have the added advantage of a guarantee of a team in the playoffs from NY (good for TV ratings) and you probably would have half of NY ready to kill the other half by Memorial Day (not to mention that half the city would be really confused about which bandwagon to jump on.)
It seems to be a win, win.
Respectfully,
Larry Lucchino
Nice post X! Would the Yankees spend as much as they do now if they only had to play the Mets all the time?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that they would still spend more than 80% of the teams, if not higher but the total dollar amount would be much closer to the average than it is now.