Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said on Thursday that the league “will move ahead” with discussions on expanding the postseason.
Selig said a 14-man committee would discuss adding two wild-card teams when it meets on Dec. 7 during MLB’s winter meetings.
“We will move ahead and move ahead pretty quickly,” Selig said as this week’s meetings involving owners and general managers concluded.
APPROVAL PENDING
A change would have to be approved by owners, who next meet on Jan. 12 and Jan. 13 in Arizona, and by the players’ association, which has said it is open to the idea.
Because baseball’s collective bargaining agreement runs to December next year, any change likely wouldn’t take effect until 2012.
“I’m not going to rule out anything,” Selig said. “We’ll just proceed and whatever we decide, then we’ll just see how fast we can get it done.”
“Once we pass something, I’m always anxious to get it done,” Selig added.
NEW FORMAT
There would be two wild-card teams in each league and the wild-card teams would meet to determine which advances to the division series — currently the first round — with the three division winners in each league.
“I think it’s definitely worth looking at. I have no problem with that,” New York Yankees co-owner Hank Steinbrenner said.
Still to be determined is whether the new round would be best-of-three game series, or perhaps a one-game knockout.
However, there appears to be little to no opposition to expansion itself.
POST-SEASON EVOLUTION
Baseball doubled its postseason teams to four in 1969 and again to eight in 1995. That was a year later than originally planned because of the players’ strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series.
The vote for that expansion took place in September 1993 and Selig recalled violent opposition from many quarters.
“I got ripped and torn apart and it was pretty bad,” Selig said. “But now it’s fascinating to me. Now they not only like it so much, they want more of it.”
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