Don't know about you, but I can't wait for the first Thanksgiving World Series.
Think about it. The turkey roasting in the oven. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan sizing up the Yankees and whoever. The kids wearing Pilgrim hats with a big orange "O" on the front and an Esskay Meats logo on the side from the first pre-wild card, intradivisional round of the playoffs.
Okay, there'll be the one cousin who doesn't want to miss the Cowboys game, but you can tell him to go upstairs and watch it on the little TV in one of the bedrooms.
This fantastic scenario is brought to you by Major League Baseball and its players union, who are starting to make noises about another expansion of the playoff format. Apparently, three playoff rounds and more than $6 billion in annual revenue — about three times what the game brought in before the Division Series were added — is not quite enough to keep the yachts and the private jets gassed up.
The good news is that, technically, they can still refer to the World Series as the Fall Classic all the way up to Dec. 22, so they've got that going for them. Which is nice.
Admittedly, I'm exaggerating, but just to make a point. The baseball postseason is just fine the way it is. There's no compelling reason to add any more playoff teams, unless the plan is to add the third and fourth-place teams from the American League East, and then I'm all for it.
Of course, baseball commissioner Bud Selig will tell you that increasing the number of wild card teams or stretching out the Division Series or adding some kind of play-in round will keep more fan bases interested in September, which probably is true. That was the argument back in the mid-1990s for adding wild card teams and — I'll have to admit — I was resistant to the expansion of the playoff format back then, too.
Selig turned out to be right that time. Baseball needed a boost after the labor unpleasantness of 1994 and the combination of an extra round of playoffs and some great scientific advances in the field of performance enhancement lifted the game to a new level of popularity and economic success. I'll admit to being a dinosaur — hopefully one of the cool ones from "Jurassic Park" and not one of the big dumb ones from the original " Lost World" — but I think you've got to draw the line before Major League Baseball morphs into the NBA.
I'm also against the expansion of the NFL regular season from 16 to 18 games, but for other reasons. I think the pro football players already take enough physical abuse and — since we're stretching every point here — I don't really want the Super Bowl taking place during spring training.
The sports executives and the network types always figure this kind of thing out too late, but there is a point where enough is enough. If you want proof of that, there is an NFL expansion team in Jacksonville and a baseball team in St. Petersburg that drew 1.87 million (22nd in the major leagues) on the way to the AL East title this year.
The ideas being considered by Selig and the baseball union aren't particularly radical. I'll admit that much. We're talking about the possibility of either adding a short wild card play-in round or expanding the first round from a best-of-five format to best of seven. Selig said Thursday that it could happen by next fall.
He insists that he doesn't want to push the postseason into November, but it's headed there this year without any increase in the LDS or an extra playoff tier. The only other way for Major League Baseball to have its extra TV cake and eat it too would be to shorten the regular season or add a handful of day/night doubleheaders to each team's schedule.
Trust me, when it's all said and done, there will be no reduction in the number of regular-season home dates, and there will be an increase in the number of possible playoff games — which means that you should get used to watching at least part of the World Series in November.
Maybe I'm just a flat-earth kind of guy, but I think the same principle applies to the baseball playoffs and the selection of the right Thanksgiving turkey.
Bigger isn't always better.
Listen to Peter Schmuck on WBAL (1090 AM) at noon Fridays and Saturdays and at 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays with Brett Hollander. Also, check out his blog, "The Schmuck Stops Here," at baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog.