LINCICOME: NL Waste is a sight for shameless eyes

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 22, 2008 at 10:10 p.m.

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Photo by David Zalubowski/Associated Press

Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Russell Martin, left, dives to pull in the throw from third baseman Andy LaRoche to force out Willy Taveras at home plate in the fourth inning on Tuesday.

Winners only, please.

How handy it is to belittle the National League West. It easily becomes the NL Worst or the NL Weakest or the NL Waste. I prefer the last one myself, since I made it up.

Hands are being wrung in the halls of baseball - the place where serious sentinels of our national pastime hang out - over the possibility that one of these wastrels will clutter up the postseason, like a hobo standing in line to kiss the bride.

Baseball is much too important and too hallowed to allow such an obvious mistake to take place. Did we not just last season have the undeserving Rockies exposed by the Red Sox? Shudder to think that might happen again.

And see how proved right were the doubters since the Rockies have reverted to type?

The rules require some team from the most woebegone grouping in baseball to be represented in the postseason, no matter that the division winner might lose more games than it wins.

Going into Tuesday's games, for example, both the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks were under .500, a sin at least as dire as using the wrong fork. Tsk. Tsk.

Fair-minded sorts, mostly to the east of us, look around and see the chilling possibility that either New York or Philadelphia might be excluded with much better records, the same with Milwaukee or St. Louis.

Even with the best record in the league now, the Cubs could yet find themselves barred at the end, while one of those short-history upstarts from better climates are invited in.

How great the horror of such a thing, if so perfectly Cub-like. To be 100 years between titles and then kissed off by inferiors.

Never mind that the issue is the wild card, a hybrid gimmick with no pedigree of its own. This is like arguing over a parking space.

There have been suggestions, not blogs but honest considerations, that for the good of the game and for fairness all around, maybe the NL Waste ought to do the decent thing and forgo the postseason, accept a consolation prize, something like a participant medal and a pat on the head.

Given no divisions, a condition in which baseball managed to exist for longer than the way it is now, the leader of the NL Waste would be only the seventh-best team in the league, some nine games out of first place.

The Rockies, hanging somewhere between hope and fantasy, would be double digits behind rather than the fluctuating half dozen or so.

Worse yet, because even the Rockies lurk, if any of the teams were somewhere more desperate, parked beyond optimism as they should be, they would be lopping off players to shore up real contenders.

What to do about Brian Fuentes, for example, if the Rockies just won't be awful enough to make him irrelevant? It is a solid baseball tradition that teams with no hope give away their futures before the trading deadline. So how dare the Rockies consider holding on to Matt Holliday.

If only one team, say the Diamondbacks, who began the season as if they were going to win the division by May, would do the decent thing and run off and hide, then the others could get on with figuring out next season.

But, no. They would rather make a race of it, even if the race is being run on four flat tires and no spare (that would be San Diego). It is still a race.

How thoughtless to build excitement out of alibis. Teams in the West - or, the Waste - have been neutered by injuries, any one of them able to roll out a list of missing stars. It ought to be called the milk carton division.

But this raises no sympathy from any team that might be left behind just because of geography. And it is not that at all, since the American League West has mostly good teams, and a lot of good that does any of them but the Angels, who are about to lap poor Texas and Oakland.

Were the Rockies in the AL West, they would be nearly three times as far from first place as they are now. And where's the fun in that?

Would we rather have one team running away, or four of five teams taking turns cheering each other up? Misery does love company and there is a lot of that to be shared.

As another newspaperman once advised, limp West, young man.

• July 23, 2008

  1:58 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Domino writes:

  Last week, Lincicome said that Billy Packer quit too late because he had lost his enjoyment of the game. Maybe, Lincicome should look in the mirror. It is a drag to read his columns. They are always negative.

• July 23, 2008

  5:31 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  nmbronco1 writes:

  Another crappy column from one of the worst sports writers in America. There are regional divisions in all sports. Half of the teams that qualified for the NBA Eastern Conference playoffs had worse records than the Denver Nuggets this past year. You don't change the way all sports divisions are composed and playoffs determined because there is an anomalous year when one division isn't doing as well as usual. A few years back the same thing happened in the NL East. The only "waste" I see here are the words the RMN allowed Lincicome to write and then print in their newspaper.

• July 23, 2008

  11:50 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Hambone writes:

  I almost never read this idiot anymore. Never thought I would miss Bob Kravitz so much!

  Hey Lip!, when's the contract up? RMN better can your butt.

• July 23, 2008

  1:37 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  fuzzyjim writes:

  I'm with you guys. I read his column maybe once every couple of weeks, and I ALWAYS wonder why I wasted the time. Of course, that pretty much goes for Krieger and the Post's so called top two columnists. Denver is plagued with bad columnists. At least we have Sam Adams and Jim Armstrong, who are entertaining if not profound. Actually, that's probably the way is SHOULD be.

• July 23, 2008

  1:44 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  SLoganSt writes:

  It seems pretty funny that these people that don't like Bernie's columns continue to read them.
  Bernie's column pointed out how truly peculiar the Rockies circumstances are this year. Personally, I thought it was a positive column, poking a little gentle fun at the sad state of the NL West this year, and the sorry predicament in which the Rockies find themselves. They are a truly bad team (based on their current record), yet find themselves still knocking on the door of the division lead, thanks to the peculiar circumstance that the rest of the NL West teams are nearly as bad. Do they do what any self respecting team that finds itself fifteen games (or whatever it is) below five hundred would do in (virtually) any other year, and start working towards next year? Or, do they imagine that since they are only six games back, they should pull out all the stops, keep the team intact, trade some minor league talent for some help this year, and go for it? It is quite a puzzle for poor Dan O'Dowd.
  Personally, I'd like to see them go for it, no matter how silly it seems when you have a losing record. Guess what: it doesn't matter what your absolute record (total wins and losses) is, only what your relative record (wins and losses wrt to other teams in the NL West). Six games out is six games out. Our farm system is well stock (as I understand it). Go for it, get on a roll, anything can happen in the those short little series called the post-season.

• July 24, 2008

  9:14 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  jmo writes:

  I'm shocked by the reader comments above. Bernie Lincicome's article clearly is "spot-on" as evidenced by today's USA Today, which basically copies Bernie's message. So as a reader, are you disappointed by his message or his ability as a writer; It seems like everyone is mixing up the two. Bernie is an excellent writer. While he is never going to be Jim Murray, he's better than Woody Paige, whose writing has suffered the more time he spends on television.

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