David Taintor

It’s been just over a month since the Major League Baseball season got underway, and more than 25 games have been played.

If this were the NBA or the NHL, more than a quarter of the season would already be over. And if this were the NFL, we would already have completed more than 156 percent of the entire season.

However, this isn’t any of those other leagues; this is Major League Baseball. Having more than 25 games played means there is still over five months of regular-season games to go.

Think about that. MLB will knock off another 25 games in the next month, and they would still have enough time left in their marathon of a season for an entire NFL schedule, plus the pre-season.

The problem is simple: Major League Baseball’s season is way too long. And for what?

Don’t get me wrong – I love baseball as much as anyone. I played it my entire life and can appreciate the stigmas of the game as much as anybody. But I want less.

It is so hard to follow an entire Major League season as a fan. It takes place over two school years, an entire summer and more than half a calendar year. Teams take so many twists and turns in that amount of time that you never know whether or not your team is for real. With so much time, every single team in the league appears to belong in the cellar at some point.

To fans of teams at the bottom of the league, the abundance of games makes the pain linger for even longer. They can’t wait for it to be over (believe me, I grew up a Brewers fan in the 90s and early 2000s).

And, to the fans of teams at the top of the league, they wish those last 20 or 30 games would just go away. It appears to just be delaying the inevitable.

If many of the fans can’t wait for the pain to end, and a good portion think having so many games is just delaying the inevitable, then why do we have them?

Why do they need 162 games to figure out who the best team is? I am very confident that we would know who the best teams were after 130 games, or even better, 110.

To test this theory I went on ESPN’s Web site and checked the division winners from the past five seasons. After that, I checked which team was the division leader after 130 games during those five seasons.

Of the 30 teams that won their division during those five years, 25 of them were in first place after August 25, when all teams have played 130 games or more. The New York Mets, in first place after August 25, failed to win the division twice, pulling off consecutive end-of-the-season chokes in historic fashion.

Another one of those outlier teams was the Los Angeles Dodgers of 2008, who made a late-season trade, which drastically improved their team.

But what about those two teams that didn’t choke? They both ended up winning the division and wouldn’t have made the playoffs if the season had ended sooner, like I am suggesting.

I have the perfect solution.

By cutting 32 games off the season, and over a month, the playoffs could be extended by adding two more teams into the mix from each league. Replacing some of these regular-season games with more playoff games would be beneficial to everyone involved.

More cities would benefit because their teams would be contenders for a longer period of time. Throughout history, nothing has been able to bring together cities as much as a successful sports franchise. Allowing more teams into the postseason would only permit more cities this good fortune.

The players on the teams would benefit because they would have more to play for with two extra playoff spots available. Likewise, an increasing number of younger players would gain postseason experience, which would make them better off in the long run.

And, most importantly, the league would benefit. Postseason games generate far more money through sold-out stadiums and higher television ratings. It’s simple — more

postseason games would equate to more money for the league.

The MLB allows too few teams into the playoffs as it is, and it doesn’t afford enough teams the chance to win a championship. The NBA, which has the same amount of teams in its league, allows twice as many teams into the playoffs.

I certainly don’t think doubling the amount of teams is a good idea, but adding four teams into the mix, with a shorter season, can only help all of the parties involved.

See who the division leaders are this season after 130 games (if you even remember by then, since it takes so long to get to that point, which is why I wrote this column), and then check to see if there is much of a difference after being forced to wait another 32 games. Trust me baseball fans, there won’t be.

Waiting to stop steroids, postponing a salary cap and seasons lingering on way too long, MLB is the master of delaying the inevitable.