It's Wild, but That's Not All

PHILADELPHIA Baseball's wild card is now 15 years old. He's turned out to be an exciting but troublesome teenager.

The concept has invigorated the regular season, even saved the last month of several years from boredom while creating added interest in half a dozen towns every year. That's been a boon.

But the game's expanded field has filled the postseason with problems that may never be tractable. Throughout this era, the game has tried to balance fairness -- the integrity of the game with a title at stake -- with cheap thrills, higher TV ratings and fun.

Fun won.

Welcome to 21st-century America? Or chill and enjoy the party?

What we're left with is a three-round championship circus that is usually full of excitement and punctuated with lots of upsets. But the cost has also been high. And it's all on display now, especially in heart-attack five-game division series, many played in shadows.

To illustrate this still-evolving wild-card world, look at the Rockies' 5-4 victory over the Phils to even their series against the defending World Series champs at a game each. "You can barely see the ball, hitting or catching," said Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba, who hit a two-run homer in the worst of the fourth-inning shadows. "I got lucky. I closed my eyes and swung."

"Sometimes you can't pick up the catcher's signs or see the ball when it's hit back at you," said winning pitcher Aaron Cook. "For right-handed pitchers in this park, the sun comes through the stands and gets in your eyes. It's not the game we play all season.

"You just have to adjust."

For 15 years, everybody both on the field and simply watching has been adjusting, coping and deciding how much we can, or should, swallow from this new form of the sport.

A perverse determination to enjoy things exactly the way they are (because they seldom get a whole lot better) is essential if you want to be happy watching baseball this time of year. Usually, that describes me. Plenty annoys me, but not too deeply. I shrug as well. But the next month could be the acid test for lots of us.

If baseball games that end after midnight, or World Series that stretch well into November, insult your affection for the sport; or if games played a mile above sea level that begin with a game-time temperature of 29 degrees, as is predicted for Saturday's Rockies-Phillies meeting, strike you as unnatural, then this could be a tough autumn for you.