Baseball is infected by playoff fever.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.
• Position: Column

In a sports world gone mad with constant change, baseball had served as a bastion of stability. No longer. The National Pastime has jumped on the playoff bandwagon and now will feature six divisions and a multi-tiered post-season replete with wildcard teams. Tradition has been traded in for dollars.

For more than a half-century, major league baseball was a rock-solid non-evolutionary comfort. The two leagues (American and National) produced two pennant-winners who met in the World Series to determine baseball's champion. Franchises never shifted cities, and it always took a first-place finish to earn a visit to the Fall Classic. Even the advent of expansion, divisional play, and carpetbagger owners (who moved their clubs from town to town) didn't really dilute the concept that only the best deserve a shot at the title. In 1993, for instance, just four of 28 big league clubs advanced to the post-season, each the leader of its seven-team division. Compare that to last year's National Hockey League (16 of 24), National Basketball Association (16 of 27), and National Football League (12 of 28).

One of the defining characteristics of every sport throughout history is that the more (or longer) two teams play, the more likely it is that the better one will win. Or, to cite a cliche, the cream always rises to the top - eventually. Baseball followed this philosophy to the letter, with unparalleled success. Not only were playoff berths rationed out stingily, but teams had to endure a six-month daily grind of 154 (later, 162) games to reach the pinnacle.

But being different - and better - apparently has lost its appeal for the nation's number-one game. Instead of the American and National League being broken up into two divisions of seven teams apiece, each circuit now has three divisions: East, Central, and West. Here's the revised roadmap: A.L. East (Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, New York, Toronto); A.L. Central (Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota); A.L. West (California, Oakland, Seattle, Texas); N.L. East (Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York, Montreal, Florida); N.L. Central (Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago); N.L. West (San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Colorado).

In each league, the division winner with the best record and the wildcard team square off (unless those two teams are from the same division). The other series matches the remaining two clubs. The first-round victors then will play for the pennant...