Why expanding the baseball playoffs is a bad idea

"More is better." It's the misguided motto of American sports.

The NHL pretty much relegated itself to second-tier status over the past 20 years by expanding from 21 to 30 teams -- a 42% increase! The growth left the majority of teams full of no-names, playing in half-empty stadiums in hockey hotbeds such as Phoenix and Columbus. More was not better.

The NFL wants to expand its regular season to 18 games, even though it's getting harder and harder for players to make it through the current 16-game schedule without getting injured. More will not be better.

And now Major League Baseball is throwing around the idea of expanding its playoffs -- one of the few remnants of a simpler sporting world gone by.

Commissioner Bud Selig justifies expanding the baseball playoffs by pointing out that far fewer teams qualify (eight of 32) than in the other sports (12 of 32 in the NFL, 16 of 30 in the NHL and NBA). But he neglects to mention that baseball's regular season is much, much longer than any other sport's.

With 162 games, much of baseball's regular season is already meaningless. By August -- if not earlier -- most teams know they don't have a chance to make the postseason. But this meaninglessness for the masses actually makes the regular season more meaningful for the few contenders. Just four teams from each league qualify for the baseball playoffs, so you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that these teams proved themselves over a very long period of time and deserve to be there.

This dynamic also makes the baseball playoffs more meaningful. There are no cupcake 1 vs. 8 match-ups. There are no teams with losing records. Every series pits two really good teams against each other.

And still, the TV ratings for the baseball playoffs don't even come close to matching those for the NFL regular season. What makes the powers that be think it will get any better by adding a week-long series between the Reds and Cardinals or Braves and Padres (what the first-round National League match-ups would have been this year if six teams qualified)?

The only people who seriously watch the baseball playoffs anymore are purists like me and bandwagon fans like all the people I've randomly seen wearing Giants hats around Boston this week. Expanding the baseball playoffs will only alienate purists and attract the bandwagon fans for a few extra weeks.

In this case, like in so many others in American sports, more is definitely not better.