Is it Time to Re-Align?

[Moose Milligan]

Sox and Yanks automatically make the playoffs each year?

Screw that noise. They should have to have a steel cage ladder wrestling match to get in. I'd love to see Youkilis bash A-Rod over the head with a folding chair while referee Bud Selig is knocked out by a pile driver and oblivious to all the cheating that's going on. Then Youkilis gets dropped from the top turnbuckle by Rivera.

[MCO'sFan]

Sox and Yanks automatically make the playoffs each year?

Screw that noise. They should have to have a steel cage ladder wrestling match to get in. I'd love to see Youkilis bash A-Rod over the head with a folding chair while referee Bud Selig is knocked out by a pile driver and oblivious to all the cheating that's going on. Then Youkilis gets dropped from the top turnbuckle by Rivera.

I am glad that you got the spirit of the thread!!

[Mad Mark]

Sox and Yanks automatically make the playoffs each year?

Screw that noise. They should have to have a steel cage ladder wrestling match to get in. I'd love to see Youkilis bash A-Rod over the head with a folding chair while referee Bud Selig is knocked out by a pile driver and oblivious to all the cheating that's going on. Then Youkilis gets dropped from the top turnbuckle by Rivera.

Rivera doesn't have the upper body strength to pull that move...unless he's slinging himself some Pedroia!

[Robbie]

Baseball has changed greatly to an esisting financial disparity which is most noticable in the American League East where New York and Boston have financial resources that allow them to outspend their competition. When a new season begins many teams are out of the running before the first pitch is thrown. Why not realign the Leagues based upon what teams allocate for payroll and make chanfes as needed every five to seven years. Teams could build their franchises from within and this parity would lead to game that has excitement in every Major League City. It would serve to strengthen the game and increase the interest of all fans.

Loyola Blakefield or Loyola University?

[nbrger]

I think re-alignment and/or a salary cap/floor are the only ways the O's will ever have a chance. As someone else has said, as long as the players union is happy ( huge ridiculous salaries) and the owners are happy ( revenue sharing to the very small market teams who pocket the cash), nothing will ever happen. What is needed to change all this is a collapse of the current system caused by drastic drops in attendance, lower tv revenues and decline in merchandising sales.

I think none of these will happen and baseball will slide into a pseudo-sport where there are a few really good teams and a bunch of teams I characterize at Washington Generals ( see the dupes that play the Harlem Globetrotters), who simply act as the foils for the adoring fans of the big boys. This has already happened in Baltimore( OPACY full of Yankee or Red Sox fans- empty for other games).

[crawjo]

Go hard-core. No divisions. Just the AL and the NL. Top team from each league plays each other in the World Series. The divisions just serve to try to obscure the competitive imbalances, by giving inferior teams a chance through the 5 and 7 game series played every year. Without that, I think we would have seen the Yankees in the World Series in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. That would have made the disparities more obvious and forced change sooner, I think.