There Are Champions and There are Champions

The 1949-1953 Yankees had to beat the Cleveland Indians of Lemon, Wynn, Feller, Garcia, Doby, Avila, and Easter, the Red Sox of Williams, DiMaggio, Kinder, Parnell, Pesky, Doerr, and Stephens, the Tigers of Kell, Wertz, Newhouser, Hutchinson, and Trucks, and the White Sox of Fox, Minoso, Pierce, and Lollar. How do those teams compare to Tampa Bay, Toronto, and Baltimore?

No one can deny that GETTING to the World Series today is much more difficult than it was when the Yankees won five consecutive pennants and World Championships in the 1950s, but winning a division title is merely the first step and it is a step that is much easier to achieve than winning the pennant before divisional play.

This season, the San Diego Padres, a mediocre team that won 82 games while losing 80, were National League Western Division Champions. What did they celebrate when they finally won the division? The fact that they were going to lose to the Cardinals in the first playoff round? Were the Padres "winners?" The Padres were sacrificial lambs to allow major league baseball to generate revenue from ticket and concession sales and for television to have three games to televise to gullible fans.

There are champions and there are champions. Being a division champion is meaningless unless it leads to the pennant and the pennant is nothing unless it leads to the World Championship. Putting the entire situation into perspective helps.

There are eight "champions" going into the playoffs but there are only two league champions and only one World Champion. There are so many playoff games, it is virtually impossible to remember what happened a few days after it happened. The significance rarity produces has been lost.

Most fans know when their team won the World Series. Most fans know who won the World Series last year, and maybe even who won it the year before. But how many of those fans know who won the American League's Central Division two years ago or that the Yankees won the "wild card" in 1997 or that Randy Johnson led Houston lost to the Padres in the 1998 playoffs? Case closed.

References:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/league...

http://www.baseball-reference.com/league...

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/

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