Clowns on unicycles, and baseball

Pitchers and catchers report this week to spring training, which is always the first sign that what lies outside your window in this part of the world will not always be gray on gray, with undertones of gray.

The return of baseball means there will be greens and blues and brick-dust reds in vivid chunks again soon, and people strolling about in their shirtsleeves beneath a benevolent sun, and the evocative pop of leather as baseballs sail back and forth across the high sky in Arizona and Florida.

It also means scribes all across America will be writing flowery junk like that, even if they try not to.

That's because these are the love-letter days for baseball, a Pastime that Passed its Time awhile back. It's the best time of year for our old national game -- which clings to its yesterdays to its own detriment so often, but which is allowed this small window of time every year when it's entirely appropriate to do so.

Of course, being baseball, it can even mess that up.

And so in this week of all weeks, MLB decided to roll out its latest new improved pproposals to Make Baseball Relevant Again. Bruited about are these changes: Adding four more wild card teams to the existing playoff structure; giving the teams with the best records a bye into the divisional round; turning the wild-card round into a best-of-three in which the teams with the better records will host all three games; and allowing those same teams to choose their own opponents via some sort of Selection Sunday show.

Clowns on unicycles, trapeze artists and bears reading Proust to follow, presumably.

The reaction to these proposals has included exactly the sort of hee-hawing and ridicule you might expect, which suggests to the Blob that this is all a trial balloon of sorts that will never see the light of reality. To begin with, adding four wild-card teams would mean almost half the majors -- 14 teams -- would make the playoffs. This would bring baseball perilously in line with the NHL, where practically everyone but the Saskatoon Macaroons make the playoffs.

Then, of  course, there's that whole selecting-your-own-opponent business. Framing it in a Selection Sunday format doesn't present as a bold new approach; it only looks like a pathetic attempt to appear hip and relevant here in the new millennium. It's far more grasping than gripping, in other words.

It also changes the entire dynamic of athletic competition. There has always been at least a veneer of respect between opponents; this blows that veneer to shards. If Team A chooses Wild Card B as its opponent, after all, what does that say other than Team A thinks Wild Card B is a bunch of schlubs and stumblebums?

Yeah, we choose the Hooterville Mudeaters as our opponent, on account of they couldn't hit a beach ball and their pitchers are bunch of noodle-armed bushers. They suck worse than the Orioles, in other words. Bring 'em on.

What this does, of course, is lend credence to one of the oldest (and weariest) tropes on sports: No One Gave Us A Chance. The Mudeaters would eat that up with a spoon. And if they'd happen to win (because, in baseball, that happens all the time)?

Well. Twitter would roast Team A over an open flame. The hometown scribes would be merciless, and the ridicule (and howls of laughter) would be endless: Hey, look, these dopes are so sorry they couldn't even pick a team they could beat. How sad is THAT?

Of course, there's always a chance the aforementioned Mudeaters could be my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates. With 14 of the 30 MLB teams making the playoffs, I suppose that could actually happen.

OK, so no. No, it couldn't.