Short Story-The Season of Change

When the matter was brought up on the House floor the day before the holiday recess, a few people, present and at home watching on C-Span, snickered about the things that the United States Government and the one hundred and eleventh Congress take time to mull over. Nevertheless, even with the intense public separation, the Professional Sports Reform act of 2009 was passed with a two-thirds majority, and a new House Subcommittee on Athletic Entertainment was formed to examine the major sports and the grumblings about their flaws, and be given complete control to adjust that sport’s structures and customs to suit the likings of the American public. It was argued in the House of Representatives that fully capturing the American public’s interest and locking it into sports would re-solidify the economy, and that perfecting the way the three major sports appeared to the average person would be key to that result.

It began on December tenth during Major League Baseball’s winter meetings when one of the first non-House proponents of the idea, Senator Arlen Spector (D-PA) held a press conference to announce some emergency changes to the upcoming baseball season. It was told to us, from his MLB-adorned podium that it was in the best interest of the new-age fan and the baseball purist to shorten the major league baseball season.
“It has seemed,” bellowed Senator Spector, “that those we’ve surveyed and will survey with the upcoming census are seeking major reform from all three of the major professional sports, but that baseball needs the most careful attention.”
To please those who dislike the Wild Card playoff format in baseball, the season was first shortened to one hundred and fifty-four games, as it was before 1961. This way, to the elation of baseball purists, many of the steroid-era records of one hundred and sixty-two games were voided, and the season was still long enough to give a clear indication of who the better teams and the best players were. Spector explained further that it was determined by researchers that the baseball season was a long enough time frame to make a clear determination on individual awards, but the separation of power in baseball proved that even a two hundred game schedule would not produce a clear champion amongst seven or eight elite teams, so the playoffs were lengthened again. With four rounds of baseball playoffs beginning the third week of September, Americans would be able to see good baseball and good teams for nearly two months, increasing playoff interest and revenue for the sport.

There was no widespread disagreement as many in government had expected, but it was expected that teams would play much more differently with less games on the schedule. Analysts began to compare the new baseball playoff system to the NBA’s, citing that the NBA playoffs, long as they may be, is a two-month festival of good teams and good ratings, and usually produces an undoubted champion. Stepping away from basketball’s lead though, Major League Baseball decided on its own to take the House subcommittee’s decisions one step further and return to the balanced schedule. They also eliminated Inter-league play, so that every team would play every team at a time when divisional impact would come to matter much less, and two teams that hadn’t played would meet in the World Series.

In February, after the Super Bowl and during the harshest point of labor negotiations, the House Subcommittee took the avoidance of their mission by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell as a sign that they’d need to step over even his power. Two days before the start of Major League Baseball’s spring training, Jennifer and Judith Kemp, daughters of the late congressman Jack Kemp, made a public appearance without the consent of the NFL to read a posthumous letter written by their father almost one year earlier and five weeks before his death. In the letter, Kemp maps out the way he’d choose to adjust the NFL season, and for four days, television analysts argued about everything from Kemp’s idea of an eighteen-game schedule with only two preseason games, to the validity of the letter. The letter and it’s emotional reading though caught hold of the public, and the event gained much more notoriety than originally expected.

By early March, media polls showed that seventy percent of people were in favor of changing the NFL season in some way, and Major League Baseball teams were very aware of the United States’ government’s power. General managers began to comprise their teams based on the one hundred and fifty-four game schedule, expecting teams around the Major Leagues to take every game and every position in the standings much more seriously. Right away, the push by teams like the Royals, Pirates and Reds to be included in with baseball’s elite teams was evident. Most teams used a four-man pitching rotation even though Major League rosters were still allowed to contain twenty-five players. On some teams, bullpens enlarged, in hopes that there would be more pitchers to get good hitters out late in games. Some teams added extra hitters so that no lead would be safe late in games. After one month, the Los Angeles Angels had the best record in baseball, at the All-Star Break, the Minnesota Twins held that distinction. Series throughout the schedule became hard-fought battles that changed the standings and playoff picture every day. Josh Beckett and Zack Greinke were each on a pace to make forty-three starts, but each already had ten no-decisions. David Ortiz hit twelve home runs in April, eighteen in May, and fourteen in June, and everyone was sure that this would be the year that a designated hitter would win the Most Valuable Player award.

The strange things that happened next truly shocked the American public. Unable to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, and amidst intense pressure to adjust the NFL season from the government and those ignorant to the business of the NFL, Roger Goodell resigned without fanfare or visible animosity, and it was understood that the NFL would endure at least one season without a salary cap. Four days later, former NFL wide receiver and former United States Representative of the first district of Oklahoma, Steve Largent was chosen to be the NFL’s next commissioner. With friends in the House, most were sure that the newest House subcommittee would be more than able to impose their will on Largent and the NFL. In July, a week after NBA commissioner David Stern announced that government research had shown no need to adjust their playoff format, but did determine that adding nine games to the regular season and consecutive three-game series to every season series would benefit their regular season, the NFL announced their plans to overhaul the NFL season.

Largent, along with the Kemp Daughters and head of the NFL player’s association, Demaurice Smith held a press conference in New York City to announce the changes to the upcoming NFL season. It was one day before the Hall of Fame inductions, and all thirty-two NFL ownership groups were put on notice that there would be eighteen games on the upcoming NFL schedule. Every team would play two preseason games and bye weeks would become two-weeks long. As Largent explained to Charlie Rose later that week, the adjustments dealt with all aspects of professional football:
“Now, I know two-week breaks will be the most controversial issue of this plan, but we’ve gotta generate fan interest in cities like Jacksonville and San Diego. The only way to get that done is to deprive them of football mid-season. The good teams will get rest and stirring interest from the fans, the bad teams will give their fans a break from losing, then, two weeks later it’s ‘oh, the Lions are on, haven’t thought about them in a while. Who are they playing? Vikings? Sweet. Let’s sit down and enjoy this. ’ Fans will want our league so much more that blackouts will never again be a problem. Hell, we may have to scrap that rule altogether.”

Like their counterparts in baseball, NFL coaches and general managers adjusted according to what they believed might work better for them, and most decided that a longer season could be played like a baseball season. By the time the week eight bye weeks came for teams, and everyone had played seven games so there were no even records, the upstart San Fransisco 49ers were 6-1, having steamrolled teams defensively winning five games against the Steelers, Cardinals, Ravens, Seahawks and Cowboys by three points or less. It was a time when, like in the first two months of the baseball season, a few teams might coast to build into a playoff spot and be at full pace for the playoffs. The Steelers, Patriots, Giants and Titans all met the week-seven bye week with 3-4 records, figuring that if the sixteen-game schedule brought as many as three or four turns in team’s season, then and eighteen-game schedule might mean one more.

During that time, the baseball pennant races became so exciting that September baseball even closely competed with regular season football games for ratings. White Sox General Manager Kenny Williams was one of those who constructed their teams to build in strength throughout the season, and the Minnesota Twins continued to play the old style of coasting through the end of the baseball season, and were dismantled by teams battling for eight playoff spots. They lost seventeen of their final twenty games. The White Sox and Twins ended up tied after one hundred and fifty-four games and emergency meetings were held to determine if a one-game playoff was even needed. President Obama made a brief suggestion that day in passing a reporter that “if they’re going to copy the NFL on everything, they should just make runs for, and runs against the tiebreaker…” and everyone who heard the statement collectively nodded in agreement and it was settled the very next day.

In the American League, the New York Yankees were the top seeded team, with a record of 101-53 and with eight players who hit thirty or more home runs. Then came the Twins, White Sox, Angels, Mariners, Red Sox, Orioles and on the final day of the season, the Royals found a way to edge out the Athletics for the final playoff spot. The Royals were promptly swept by the Yankees, the Orioles/Twins series was so cold for the Minnesota home games that Oriole management filed an official protest with Major League Baseball on grounds that, as Baltimore Orioles Owner Peter Angelos put it, “The games should have been temporarily moved to the Metrodome or out of Minnesota altogether on grounds that someone should have had the decency to respect baseball as a warm-weather game.” The Orioles did not score a run in the three games played there. The Red Sox and White Sox played four extra-inning games in a five-game series, but only the Red Sox pitching could help them after David Ortiz’ hip injury in August, and the White Sox shocked them with a 1-0 win in game five. Ichiro had thirteen hits in four games and the Angels couldn’t score more than the four or five runs that he usually produced by himself, and the Mariners advanced to play the Twins.

In the National League, the Chicago Cubs went 103-51 and were the top seed, followed by the Mets, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Marlins, Padres and Cardinals. Intriguing from the start, the Cardinals/Cubs first-round series ended ephemerally with a three game sweep by the Cardinals that shocked the baseball world. The Dodgers lost four three-run leads in four different games and lost three of them to the Marlins. The Phillies/Rockies series saw eighty-five total runs in four games, and seven home runs by Ryan Howard, a record at the time for any post-season series. The Phillies played the Mets in the next series after a Mets’ sweep of San Diego, and so began one of the great post-season series ever played. Meeting less times throughout the year because of a balanced schedule, the Phillies and Mets renewed their rivalry with a seven-game series that featured one hundred and sixty runs, forty-three home runs, forty-two walks (twenty-five of them intentional), a four-home run game by Raul Ibañez, three-home run games from Ryan Howard and Chase Utley in the same game, a huge brawl in game five that got all the major stars in the series suspended for four games, and a game-winning single by Cole Hamels in game seven during an emergency relief appearance that won Phildelphia the series.

Eventually, the Phillies lost two rounds later in the National league Championship Series in six games to the Marlins and in the American League, the Yankees beat Minnesota to meet and sweep Florida in the World Series. The Yankees played as if every game mattered throughout the regular season, and were commended not only for winning the World Series, but for handling the change in the schedule so smoothly. It was a season of extreme parity unlike any we’d ever experienced in baseball, and many upstart teams proved that there would no longer be an extreme separation of power. It was also a season for incredible attacking offenses. Lineups were stocked to destroy opposing pitchers, and the league-wide earned run average jumped nearly two runs. Alex Rodriguez won the American League Most Valuable Player award and was also the most valuable player of the World Series. Ryan Howard won the National League honor, and he also won the new award for the playoffs’ most outstanding player. Cliff Lee won the National League Cy Young award and Daisuke Matsuzaka won the American league award with a modern-record, 37-4 season.

One would have to say that the average American fan might have been slightly weary when the basketball season began and the football season was done with it’s endless bye-weeks, but the NBA season began without much concern, and soon turned into a season of hundreds of three-game, strategically-played series. Teams that drafted and scouted based on players’ abilities to defend, rebound and jump shoot used coaching strategies to neutralize other coaches’ strategies for three games in four days for every series. Purer, more intelligent basketball was everywhere. Teams took extensive time determining how to shackle players like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade, but players like Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh were used like NFL running backs or strike-one pitchers in baseball, and coaches controlled the tempo for a game and a half or two games instead of one quarter at a time. Guards took calculated and important jump shots and the league-wide shooting percentage increased by eleven percent. For one week in December, no team scored more than one hundred points. No player under six feet, nine inches was in the top thirty scoring leaders, but ironically, regular powerhouses, Boston, Cleveland, Orlando, the Los Angeles Lakers, Houston, Denver and Dallas were all used to winning two or three games of each of the thirty three-game series and had exceptional records after forty-five games played.

The NFL season became so intense though that it was impossible for the American public to focus on anything else. The early portion of the season had no indications into the future, and to prove that, the Giants, Cardinals, Chargers and Steelers all enjoyed six-game winning streaks after their byes. Because the Eagles, 49ers, Chiefs and Titans all won their final six games, the first four teams never made the playoffs. Adrian Peterson ran for an NFL-record two thousand, four hundred and three yards in sixteen games before injuring his knee. He was also the NFL’s Most Valuable Player on a last-place team that won nine games.

Having kept the same playoff format, the NFL had twelve teams, six in each league, that were clearly better than the other twenty. The Packers, Redskins, Colts and Ravens all enjoyed first round byes with impressive fourteen-win seasons. In the AFC, the Chiefs hosted the Bengals, losing on a late Chad Ochocinco touchdown reception, 10-7, and the Titans traveled to New England to play the division-winning Patriots and won 17-3 after an early ankle injury to Randy Moss. The NFC playoffs were stocked with upstart teams who had great formulas for surviving the new season. The Cowboys had to travel to San Fransisco and lost to the defensive-minded 49ers 13-10, and the Bears traveled to New Orleans and matched every offensive score by the Saints with a defensive score on the Saints’ next possession or a kick return for a touchdown on every ensuing Saints kickoff, and edged the Saints in New Orleans 35-31.

By the time the new calendar year had set in, there was no question throughout our country that professional sports had officially become too chaotic for anyone who followed them to predict. Wagering on all sports increased tenfold and most of the NFL games throughout the regular season and playoffs had no betting line or had a final outcome that made the original betting line seem quite silly. Still, more people watched the Super Bowl between the Titans and Bears at Cowboys’ Stadium than any other television event ever. Kerry Collins was intercepted by Daniel Manning to seal a 27-21 win for Chicago with less than one minute remaining and the Bears were the Super Bowl Champions in the wildest and most exciting NFL season in recent memory. The NFL fan base was said to have increased by fifteen percent over the course of one season, and was expected to increase again with the excitement that each season would generate for the next.

The NBA playoffs began shortly after the second one hundred and fifty-four game Major League Baseball season began, and both battled to capture the public’s attention the way the NFL had. NBA teams were so used to playing series after series that the playoffs were a group of battles between solid teams that used extensive game plans and bruising strategies to stymie offenses and control game tempos. Teams relied even more heavily on rebounding and timely jump shooting. The 71-19 Orlando Magic did not lose a post-season game until the third round when they lost to the Atlanta Hawks, one of the few teams still playing the old style of basketball with scoring streaks and runs. For that one game, or the “Joe Johnson Game” as it was called, the Magic were honestly unprepared for things like smaller men attacking the basket, or multiple three-point shots, causing Dwight Howard to foul out after the first half, and Joe Johnson scored fifty points, the most by a guard since the adjustment of the schedule, making field goals at an 18-21rate. The Magic never lost another game in capturing the NBA championship that year over the Houston Rockets, and Dwight Howard was the league’s regular season, playoff’s and finals most valuable player, averaging seventy-two offensive touches per game. Twice during the season he had a one-hundred point game and six times he had fifty-rebound games.

By the MLB all-star break, there was no indication that sports new chaotic formats would change, but more people began to watch and attend sporting events than ever before. It became so fashionable to attend sporting events that ticket prices soared and the American fan became a quiet, dignified man, woman, or family that was less struck by the raucous and vulgar emotions that sports bring about in us. We became watchful and intelligent followers of each league. The changes intrigued us all. We wanted to watch and attend simply to be a part of history, and in the future, our legacy may be history to others.