In 1978, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, which greatly cut property taxes for property owners over 65 while saddling people under 30 with a truly massive tax increase. It turned out to be the first salvo of the "Reagan Revolution," which re-distributed the tax burden downward, from the old and the rich to the young and the poor.
But 47 years later, Major League Baseball would be well advised to pass a "Proposition 154" — which, among other things, would shorten the regular season from the current 162 games to the "traditional" 154 (have you hugged a purist lately?).
The benefits from doing so would be numerous:
First, it would make it plausible to add two more teams to the major leagues, ideally with both of the two new teams coming from the South, thus allowing them to be slotted into new Southern Divisions in both leagues, as the NFL did in 2002.
Once this is done, both leagues can be realigned into four four-team divisions, with the four division winners in each league plus two wild-card teams in each league making the playoffs; or the two best second-place teams in each league can join the four division champions in the playoffs, which will allow the other two second-place teams in each league to be given shares in the post-season players pool, which was the way it worked until 2012 (as another sop to the purists).
As for the regular-season schedule, each team can play their three division rivals 11 times (11 X 3 = 33), the 12 teams in the three other divisions within the same league six times (12 X 6 = 72), with 49 interleague games, the Mets/Yankees, Dodgers/Angels, Cubs/White Sox, etc. having four meetings, with all other interleague opponents having three meetings (33 + 72 + 49 = 154). And with division rivals playing each other an odd number of times (11), this would settle any ties for division titles (there has been no three-way tie for first place ever in baseball).
And due to the shortened regular season, it would be possible — even advisable — to guarantee every team that makes the playoffs at least one home playoff game therein, with the higher seeds in the Wild Card Series getting Game 1 and (if necessary) Game 3 at home, and the lower seeds hosting Game 2, adding only two calendar days to the postseason. It would even become possible to lengthen the Division Series to best-of-seven, adding only another two more calendar days to the postseason.
In addition, there should be no more games in March — and no more regular-season games in October, either. Baseball was not made to be played in cold weather.
Since two expansion teams in the South would clearly be the preferred option, Oakland will almost certainly be left "sniffing a bicycle seat" as they used to say on Hill Street Blues. Charlotte would obviously be the first such team — there is even an online MLB franchise called the Charlotte Bats! — and either Nashville or Memphis the second (very likely to be named "Tennessee").
All four of our "major" sports are about to hit the wall that Dean Martin sung about in 1968 in his hit (Too Many Chiefs and) Not Enough Indians, in that they will soon have too many teams and not enough games (in the early 21st Century, some NHL teams played each other only once, or not even at all, in some seasons — and nobody liked it).
And there is no reason to worry about any "asterisks" that may arise from a shorter regular-season schedule. Simply calculate all stats on a per-game basis — as the NBA has always done.
Let us hope that baseball does the right thing if it is contemplating any changes along these lines.
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