Playin' dumb, per usual

 Well, of course, playin' chicken wasn't enough for the amoeba brains who run baseball. Once again they wind up at the bottom of the cliff like Jimmy Dean's rival in "Rebel Without A Cause."*

(* Gratuitous film nerd reference. Bonus points if you can name the actor who played the kid who went over the cliff in the game of chicken)

(Wrong. It was Corey Allen)

Anyway ... the two sides talked and talked yesterday, and then the deadline after the deadline-that-wasn't-really-a-deadline ran out, and now MLB has canceled Opening Day and the first series of the season. Unholster blunderbuss, shoot foot right the hell off.

One of the major sticking points, of course, is the owners' insisting on expanding the postseason to14 teams, because of course they are. This brings out the shouting-at-clouds geezer in the Blob, who agrees with the players on this one.

Which is to say, 14 teams in the playoffs is absurd. There are already 10 teams in the playoffs, and that's too many. The postseason is supposed to be a reward for proving one's mettle over a 162-game, six-month slog, not another month-long slog. 

The playoffs already run into November. At this rate, the October Classic will be the Thanksgiving Classic, and everyone will make the playoffs except the Blob's Pittsburgh Cruds, who frankly should be relegated to Triple A until their owners decide they want to behave like major-league owners.

But just for the sake of argument, let's look at who would have been added to the postseason in 2021 if it had been 14 teams instead of 10.

That's two teams per league, one would assume. In the American League, that means the Blue Jays (91-71) and A's (90-72) would have gotten in. OK, so two 90-win teams. Fine, but how often are there going to be seven 90-win teams in one league?

More representative is the National League, in this case.

Two additional teams would have meant the Phillies (82-80) and Reds (83-79) got in last fall. So, after 162 games, two barely-over .500 teams get rewarded with playoff berths?

Um, no. Sorry. And the thing is, how long before the owners would be pushing for a 16-team postseason?

ESPN is already offering to kick in an additional $100 mill for a 14-team postseason, which of course is what's driving this. After all, when have baseball's owners ever chosen the welfare of their players over a loftier pile of cash?

One hundred fifty years of players just answered "Never."