Friday, October 22, 2004
Home Field
Posted by Ben JacobsI've been seeing a lot of people talking about how lucky the Red Sox are to have home field advantage in the World Series. Some people are saying that it's unfair that a wild card team gets home field advantage in the World Series over the team with the best record in baseball just because their league won an exhibition game in the middle of the summer. Well, guess who would have had home field advantage under the old system? That's right, the Red Sox. The AL used to get home field in even years, the NL in odd years.
Whether you think it's stupid to have home field advantage for the World Series determined by the All-Star game or not, there's no reason to make a big deal out of the change this year. The old system was just as stupid and would have had the exact same result. Now, if you want to propose a third system that's better than both, by all means do so. But don't gripe that the Red Sox are lucky they changed the rules to have things determined by the All-Star game.
Ben Jacobs can be reached via e-mail.