Change the World Series

What a travesty the World Series has become. It does not crown the most popular, or sometimes even the team with the most wins in a season. It comes down to an archaic method of choosing the champion handed down from over 100 years ago. The hue and cry has begun. Change the World Series!

For those who are not as “into” sports as others, the World Series begins with a playoff series in which season records are completely ignored, except for choosing the opponent in the elimination games. A “small” market team can be matched against a “big” market team with no handicap or bonus.

Take this year’s finals for instance. Cleveland was ultimately matched against Chicago. Chicago’s population is approximately 2.7 million while Cleveland is roughly 400,000. With all those extra “voters” Chicago should have had some sort of advantage. Just last year, Kansas City defeated New York, a terrible travesty for democratic baseball.

The arguments are becoming as incessant, irritating, incoherent, and, well, ignorant as those against the Electoral College. You would think that people did not know how such things were conducted. Choosing a World Series champion, like the President, is a specific protocol. The “winner” is the one who fulfills those requirements. All other considerations are statistical considerations for someone, sometime to study. But they do not have a bearing on the outcome.

For instance, maybe we should re-examine the best 4 of 7 criteria. Why not use the total runs scored in the series? That would demonstrate a superior quality of play. This year that total was a tie, at 27. Maybe we should choose “runs scored at home versus on the road.” Nah, that is too much like soccer. Nobody understands that. And besides, they play a different number of home and away, so that would be an unfair advantage for the team with four away games.

Also akin to soccer would be the margin of victory in each game. But, alas, that also came out to be equal over the series. Wait, I have it. Let’s look at the games won margin. The first game began, of course, with zero for both teams. Then Cleveland won it, so their games won margin was 1. The Cubs erased that lead in game two, so each team got a zero. Cumulative was Cleveland “led by” 1, Chicago, 0 after game two. Game three was won by Cleveland, giving them another one game lead and total of ledby 2 to nothing for Chicago.

By winning game four Cleveland, at 3-1, increased its ledby total to 4 to nothing. Game five had Chicago fighting back to win and cut the lead, 3-2, to 1, but the total of ledby is now 5 to nothing, Cleveland. Game six ended with the teams tied at 3-3, so the ledby score remained 5 to 0 in favor of Cleveland. We all know that Chicago won game seven giving them a 1 in the ledby category. 5-1

Cleveland was clearly the winner of the series, 5 to 1, in the ledby category. In the Presidential election, Mrs. Clinton won some states by larger margins than Mr. Trump won his states, but Mr. Trump won more states.

And here, in the opinion of some, is the genius of the Founding Fathers. They devised a weighted system to avoid imposing a disadvantage on either the small states or the large states. The “big” guys get more weight because they represent more voters. But the “small” states are not overwhelmed by the sheer force of numbers. And everyone in between has an equally, weighted impact on the decision. Mrs. Clinton made the tactical mistake, or perhaps “liberal” handicap, of putting the focus on population centers and ignoring the “grass roots” or “fly over” areas.

The Cubs, to their credit, hit all the right balls and bases and pulled it out in overtime. The system performed as it was designed. The only challenge is to devise some extraneous measure to impose upon the decision process like the ledby score. The Electoral College has functioned to produce a President. It is a carefully reasoned and designed process to give everyone a significant “say” in the election.

Let’s keep the World Series the same...and the Electoral College. Cubs win! Cubs win! Cubs win!