YOUNG: Ivies can learn from World Series drama

Major League Baseball just had a month that no other professional sports league or any college conference—especially the Ivy League—could ever dream of having. From the night of Sept. 28 until the night of Oct. 28, all the glory baseball has ever had was revived. It all culminated in the St. Louis Cardinals being crowned maybe the most improbable world champions in baseball history.

After a 1994 strike and the steroid revelations of the mid-2000s, baseball has been dying for a classic postseason to revive its position as America’s pastime.

The Cardinals trailed the wild-card-leading Braves by more than ten games during the final week of August, but their incredible rise to success was marked for me by two games. On Sept. 22, the Cardinals led the Mets 6-2 going into the ninth inning, and the Mets rallied for a six-run ninth and an 8-6 win to knock St. Louis two games out with six games to play. After that loss, I, like much of the baseball world, thought the Cardinals were done. If I had had to pick a guest to be sitting next to Justin Bieber on Jay Leno’s Halloween show, David Freese would certainly not have been near the top of my list.

But lo and behold, five weeks later, after being down to their final strike twice, the Cardinals rallied to send the World Series to a seventh game. The back-and-forth nature and high intensity of the last three innings of game six proved that baseball, even at its own deliberate pace and without its large-market teams, is breathtaking at its best. Ironically enough, St. Louis held another 6-2 lead going to the ninth in game seven, but of course they would not relinquish this lead.

Let’s recap: the Cardinals may have had the most miraculous run to make the postseason ever (clinching on the final day of the season), and they played in one of the greatest World Series and World Series games in history. Meanwhile, the final day of the regular season—when the fates of both wild cards were determined—was the greatest night in regular season baseball history. Thirty-eight out of a possible 41 postseason games were played, the World Series went seven games for the first time in nine years, and both World Series favorites at the start of the playoffs went down in nail-biting five-game LDS series. Additionally, one of baseball’s greatest players, Albert Pujols, tied one of the sport’s most cherished records when he smacked three home runs in game three of the World Series to tie Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson. If you watched any baseball this past month, you witnessed history that will be replayed for decades to come.

If only we were able to witness such drama this semester in the Ivy League. But beyond the fact it is not nearly the spectacle that professional sports is, there is one large reason for the Ivy League falling flat: the lack of playoffs.

As much drama as there may have been for the first 2,426 games of baseball’s regular season, it was the do-or-die environment that made this month so spectacular. Ivy League football does not even have a playoff system, and most Ivy sports just rely on records to determine championships. Sure, The Game (Harvard vs. Yale) this year may be exciting if the rivals are within a game of each other, but there will never be a St. Louis Cardinals of the Ivy League. (Then again, in football this plagues all of Division I, not just the Ivy League.) When we come to the final weeks of the Ivy soccer or basketball seasons, there most likely won’t be any chance of an improbable run, because in order to win the league, you must have the best record. In all likelihood, Ivy League fans will just watch the Crimson cruise to both football and basketball championships. The most memorable game in recent Ivy League history was the rare basketball playoff that was forced last year because Harvard and Princeton tied atop the standings. The league needs to try and create more of those moments.

So I remind you that there are 148 days until Columbia baseball opens its Ivy season up against Yale. No matter what level, there will never be a clock in baseball, so the drama unfolds in real time, and there is always a legitimate chance for comebacks. Not to mention, there is indeed a best-of-three playoff to determine the Ivy champion. (But I’ll talk more about why baseball is superior to other sports during the spring.)

For now, we can look to next Friday like it’s our MLB playoffs. Men’s basketball will travel to play UConn in what will be the most raucous environment it’ll play in all year (if for no other reason than that UConn will raise its championship banner that night). Remember that if there were not a playoff to determine the Big East champions, UConn would have never had that dramatic Big East championship run last year, and might never have been in the position or have had the momentum to win the NCAA tournament. Instead, the playoff allowed the Huskies to deliver a run that may only be topped this year by the Cardinals’. So if you want hope for next Friday, look to both of these teams who showed us anything can happen. Although the Lions probably need more than a rally squirrel or the mystique of the 11-11-11 date to actually compete with the defending champs.

Ryan Young is a Columbia College sophomore. He is a sports broadcaster for WKCR.