And this wasn't a fluke. Far from it. There have been 10 seasons since '85 in which two, one or no teams finished over .600 and under .400. Competitive balance is what they're supposed to have in the NBA, where every season some team threatens to finish under .150, where the Los Angeles Clippers, playing in one of the biggest markets in the country, remain unable year after year to even come near a playoff net so wide it would trap Moby-Dick. Competitive balance is what major league baseball has had for nearly two decades, and no one seems to have realized it yet.
Competitive balance is here all right.
Baseball doesn't deserve to have competitive balance, not with an ownership ruled by a greedy oligarchy that constantly browbeats the weaker franchises into actions that run blatantly counter to their best interests, and the game's. But it's there, and this year that's going to be more evident than ever. I know what you want to say. Well, first of all, it would lead to a better understanding of what's going on in major league ball right now if we stopped seeing the Yankees as a symbol of all that is evil in baseball instead of what is right with it. In 1998 the Yankees had the greatest team in baseball history, period.