MLB and NFL Parity

As the MLB playoffs roll on with the usual suspects, I’ve pondered what has often been passed for conventional wisdom when comparing professional baseball to professional football.  For years, the argument went like this: parity in NFL football allows for more teams to have a chance to win a Super Bowl, therefore generating greater fan interest, while MLB baseball has too many teams that are eliminated from a World Series hunt before the first ball is pitched in April.  I remember spouting this argument myself in the 1990s as my lowly Brewers were relegated to a perennial loser.  But a review of the champions and runners up of baseball and football since 1966 – the season of the first Super Bowl – tells a different story. 

Out of 30 MLB teams, 10 haven’t won a World Series since 1966, and of those, six are franchises that weren’t around that year (though all have been in existence for at least fifteen years):

Washington (1969, formerly called the Montreal Expos)

San Diego (1969)

Milwaukee (1969, formerly called the Seattle Pilots)

Seattle (1977)

Colorado (1993)

Tampa Bay (1998)

The other four teams are the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland, Houston and Texas.

Although some recent teams haven’t yet won a World Series, many winners since 1966 have been from franchises that started after that year:  Kansas City in 1985, Florida in 1997 and 2003, Toronto in 1992 and 1993, and Arizona in 2001.

Of the ten teams who’ve not won a World Series since 1966, 7 have at least appeared in an October Classic.  The only three teams that have been excluded entirely from the World Series are the Chicago Cubs, Seattle and the Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos franchise.

Compare that to the NFL.  Of thirty current NFL teams, 14 have never won a Super Bowl.  Of those, six weren’t around in 1966, though all are now at least eleven years old:

Carolina (1995)

Cincinnati (1968)

Houston (2002)

Jacksonville (1995)

Seattle (1976)

Cleveland (1999) – note: for the purposes of this analysis, I’m considering Cleveland an expansion team from 1999 even though they kept the franchise statistics from the Browns team that moved to Baltimore in 1996.

The other teams are Minnesota, Detroit, Atlanta, Arizona (formerly the St. Louis Cardinals), Philadelphia, Buffalo, Tennessee (formerly the Houston Oilers) and San Diego.

Only one team that didn’t exist in 1966 has won a Super Bowl – the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2003.  Again, I’m not including the Ravens’ victories of 2000 and 2013 since they inherited the players from the Cleveland Browns in 1996, and therefore aren’t a true expansion team.

Of the fourteen teams who’ve not won a Super Bowl since 1966, all but four have at least appeared in a Super Bowl.  Those that have been excluded entirely are Cleveland, Jacksonville, Detroit, and the Houston Texans.  It should be noted that three of those four teams are relatively recent introductions in the NFL if you include Cleveland as an expansion team in 1999.

The following summarizes the above statistics:

SINCE 1966
	MLB	NFL
% of teams not winning a championship	33%	47%
% of teams not appearing in a championship	10%	13%

Couple these stats with the fact that new franchises are more likely to win a World Series than a Super Bowl, and it might be tempting to disagree with the usual argument about parity between the leagues.  The World Series has actually been more inclusive than the Super Bowl.

What if we focus on the last 20 years?  After all, profit sharing and free agency changed dramatically since 1966, potentially affecting championships.  Let’s look at the same statistics for 1995 to 2012 (I’m choosing these years since there was no World Series in 1994.  Also, revenue sharing was first introduced to baseball in 1996).

SINCE 1995
	MLB	NFL
% of teams not winning a championship	67%	60%
% of teams not appearing in a championship	40%	30%

Counter-intuitively, here the stats change to favor the NFL, though not dramatically.  If we shorten the timeline further and take into account only the past decade, which also coincides with the 2002 baseball negotiations when revenue sharing was fine-tuned, the MLB has 7 different winners plus an additional 5 who've appeared in a World Series  – a total of 12 teams out of a potential 20.  The NFL has 7 different winners plus an additional 6 teams who've appeared in a Super Bowl  –  a total of 13 out of a potential 20.

What conclusions can be drawn from this?  Perhaps nothing definitive, as you could continue to crunch numbers that help fine-tune or perhaps even contradict some of what the above reveals, but I think you can say that under current rules, parity within the leagues is about the same in the MLB as it is in the NFL.  What was surprising to me is how historically the MLB wasn’t as lopsidedly in favor of the big market teams as I originally thought, even before revenue sharing and playoff expansion.  Outside of the Yankees’ run in the 90s, there has been a good deal of turnover in the World Series, and expansion teams have had success, sometimes fairly quickly.

The Suburban Myth

The mythology of suburbia is thick, with mountains of publications spreading the idea that the burbs are an endless landscape of plazas and McMansions where free spirits are forced to conform and where people living not 25 feet from their neighbors live in lonely isolation.  Books have been published about it.  Sermons given.  Songs written.

I love the vintage Anne Taintor magnets that satirize the suburbs, usually through the eyes of a 1950s housewife.  My favorite is of a woman washing dishes who declares, “If by ‘happy’ you mean trapped with no means of escape…?  then yes, I’m happy.”

The Rush song, Subdivisions, describes the suburbs as a place where creativity is a road to isolation:

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone…

…Any escape might help to smooth 
The unattractive truth 
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe 
The restless dreams of youth 

These lyrics didn’t mean much to me when it came out in 1982, but as an adult I’ve become more enchanted by this idea of the “suburban dream,” a phrase usually uttered with a degree of irony.  I’ve heard people respond to the question, “How are things going?” with “Oh, you know.  Living the dream in suburbia.”

As with most myths, there’s a morsel of truth behind the sentiment that’s been exaggerated for effect.

As a teenager, I remember saying to friends, “If I ever considering mowing the lawn and doing the laundry achievements, shoot me.”  And yet, I’ve been doing just that for the last 16 years.  I’ve managed to get a few interesting things done as well, but there’s no doubt that a good day is a day when I get a bunch of chores done.  And as a parent who has sometimes fallen into the trap of scheduling my children’s lives with activities from sunup to sundown, I really do think there is a danger that we are fast producing children who are being put into “little boxes” and who will “come out all the same.” (thanks Malvina Reynolds for your satirical look at the burbs).

But I look around me at the ridiculous talents of the children in my community, be it in art or math, science or drama, music or social action endeavors, politics and athletics, and I conclude that the suburban myth of a sprawling landscape of individuality suppression is just that – a myth, applicable to some but not to others, just like any other mythology (consider the Wild West or of New York’s Broadway).

Sadly, there are lost souls in the suburbs, people who are misunderstood, misguided, underloved and uninspired.  But then there are many remarkable people already living out their futures.  Just yesterday I read about Dane Christianson, a 20 year-old student at Illinois IT, who recently invented a new take on the Rubik’s Cube and who looks to become a successful entrepreneur in 2014.

I won’t bother to tell you what I  was doing when I was twenty, but it surely had nothing to do with thinking.

Sure, I wish my neighborhood was a little more friendly.  We have a long way to go in the hospitality department.  I wish more would open their doors to the people who live next door or down the block from them.  I wish people walking their dogs would say hello when passing by.  I wish people wouldn’t drive their cars into their garages, not to be seen again until they leave their garages the next morning.  Things surely aren’t perfect.  And I’m saddened by the young souls who truly don’t fit in, often with tragic consequences.

But I’m no longer buying into the myth.  My kids are doing more interesting things with their teenage years than I did with mine.  A little too scheduled?  Probably.  But also not busily TPing houses on a regular basis the way I did (sure, it was a hell of a lot of fun, but was it constructive?).

If my life adds another reason to buy into the suburban myth, so be it.  It isn't too shabby.

The True Sign of Aging: Smarter Kids

As the parent of two sixteen year-olds, I recognize that my perceived IQ is going to plummet precipitously over the next five years or so, only to rebound nicely in time for my daughters’ graduations from college.  This, I can accept, primarily because it’s temporary and because I’ll end up looking pretty good in the end.

I can also accept that I recently had to purchase my first pair of reading glasses and that the suit I purchased in 1993 is becoming tight in the mid-section. 

What I can’t accept is the true sign of aging: having kids that are far smarter than I am or ever will be.  And this has nothing to do with grades and tests.  Sure, both of my daughters did better on their practice ACTS than I did on my actual exam, but they’ve also taken classes that begin with the words “honors” and “AP,” and they tend to engage in activities such as completing assignments and studying.  Well, sure, anyone can do well on his ACT if he prepares for it.  Where’s the challenge in that?

No, the true sign of my kids’ superior intelligence was exhibited on Labor Day, when my family got together with friends and agreed to play a game of Pictionary – children vs. adults.  I am humbled and ashamed to reveal that my opponents were three-quarters of the way through the board before my team reached the first square!  We managed to shrink the margin of defeat before our kids completed their victory dance, but in truth, the adults – to borrow President Obama’s description of the 2010 midterm election – took a shellacking

Yes, I drew a Christmas tree about as well as my daughter did, but that didn’t help my team guess any quicker.  And my game partner learned that drawing nothing to help us guess the word “nothing,” wasn’t as successful as drawing something and then drawing a line through it, as our opponents did.  Even my 11 year-old son, who I would hope to be lagging somewhat on the intelligence front, portrayed “time zone” perfectly, sketching the Earth, drawing vertical lines through it, and then adding a clock for good measure. 

That’s right.  My sixth grader successfully drew “time zone.”  My team couldn’t even get “yield sign.”

Which is why from now on, I’m going to exercise my superiority over my children the only way I know how: ping-pong.

July 2012: What a difference a year makes

A year ago this week the brittle grass had all but given up.  Vegetables that had flourished briefly in the spring clung to life only because of daily watering sessions that both my wife and I were already tired of providing.  Normally, we’d hit a wall by early August, but this year, after having reached the 80s eight days in March, after breaking high temperature records twice in May, and after enduring the sixth warmest and fifth driest June on record, we’d already had it.  And it was just beginning.  Patience was wearing thin.  Tempers were short.

On July 1, I road home on my bike from my Sunday morning gig at Elmhurst Presbyterian Church, and on the way noticed a distinct line of foreboding clouds to the west.  As I neared home, I saw people watering their flowers and I shouted out, “There’s rain coming.”  I made it home, and my son and I took out lawn chairs in the back yard to watch the approaching storm, a welcome sight after such a dry June.

We lasted about thirty seconds.

The violence of our annual Storm of the Century forced my family and me inside and into the basement, where we could hear from outside the cracking of tree limbs, followed by the all-too-familiar sound of our electricity shutting off, as our smoke alarms yelped out a short, high-pitched siren of protest before falling silent.

A half an hour later, the sun was out, and our neighborhood spent that afternoon surveying the destruction, comparing stories and pulling branches to the curbs, careful to avoid those areas that had downed power lines (my house was one such area).  The destruction outside was far short of the images we’ve seen recently from Missouri and Oklahoma, but for the residence of north Elmhurst, this was close enough.  My poor tree in the back yard had shed yet another limb (one a year for the past three years), striking my neighbor's newly installed roof and gutters.  Neighbors across the street had a new hole in their roof, and down the street stood an invisible SUV, fully-encased in the branches of a downed limb.

And then the heat came.  The whir of generators could be heard all around us, a constant drone that only added to our frustration, because none of the sound was to our benefit.  We emptied our freezer and refrigerator and took the contents to our neighbors who still had electricity a block away, and as we put the last of our groceries into their freezer, their electricity went out.  It seemed that saving the chicken we’d purchased at Costco was not to be.

Our son was leaving for camp the next morning, and we’d planned on making a meat loaf for his “Last Supper,” but now we had to improvise.  We got in the car, heading down Roosevelt, expecting to find a restaurant open somewhere.  There was.  One.  Almost seven miles away.  Boston Market experienced what was probably its busiest Sunday evening ever.  From miles around, people had flocked for roasted chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn, as the storm had shut down power as far west as Wheaton, through Glen Ellyn and Lombard and into Villa Park and Elmhurst. 

I summarized the mayhem in a text to my brother who was out of town…

Lines down. Transformer on fire.  Poles off kilter.  The works.  No flooding though.  If it weren’t for the heat I wouldn’t really care.

Ah, but there was heat.  That evening our second floor reached 94 degrees, as temperatures outside his 98.  On Tuesday we hit 96 with a low of 77 and still no electricity, and my wife, who was enjoying a day working in air conditioned bliss, texted me at home…

Any progress?

I texted back…

If u consider nothing as progress, then yes.  There’s progress.

That evening I decided to get the hell out of my hell-like home and go to York High School for a community band rehearsal, where we practiced in air conditioning and shared stories of the storm.  I was one of the few left without power.  Then I received the most welcome text ever from my wife…

Power is on!!!!!

I arrived home, and we aborted our temporary sleeping quarters in our relatively cool basement, and returned to our bedroom with the air cranked.  The next morning we took off for New York to see my sister-in-law, and here’s what we left behind:

July 4^th, 102 degrees

July 5^th, 103 degrees

July 6^th, 103 degrees

All three days were records.  We’d go on to have our third hottest July on record, with not one day offering a high temperature of less than 80 degrees. 

Today, July 2^nd, 2013, we expect a high temperature of 73.  Our grass is lush and green.  Our vegetables our flowering.  Our power is on.  True, we haven’t really had to use our band new air conditioner much this year, but that was to be expected.  And really, if we could have the summer we’re currently having every year from here on out, I’d be happy to never use our air conditioner again.

The Best 20 Minutes of News on TV

Getting one’s news from television may seem like an antiquated idea: according to The Pew Rearch Center, just about a third of people younger than 30 are getting any of their news from TV.  This is in stark contrast to the days of Brokaw, Jennings and Rather, when well over half of American’s watched news on television.  My old roommate Scott and I used to say to each other at 5:30 each evening, “Time for Brokaw?” and tune in to NBC.  How many people today can even name the three network news anchors?  Can you?  (full disclosure: I couldn’t.  I forgot that Diane Sawyer is still doing ABC News).  And if you do tune into the evening news, will you walk away with more information on prescription drug ads than you will actual news?

Despite the fall of television journalism, there are twenty minutes that I find well worth my time: the first segment of CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose and Nora O’Donnell.

Back in the day, CBS was the network to shy away from the fluff that NBC and ABC embraced so enthusiastically.  Ratings suffered, and CBS news, both evening and morning, was relegated to third place for a long time.  Perhaps it is in this spirit – the spirit of Dan Rather, who has accused today's reporters of needing a spine transplant – that CBS’s morning news has reinvented itself so effectively in the last year.  After years of trying to compete with NBC and ABC, and after a long game of anchor musical chairs – remember names like Chris Wragge, Jeff Glor and Julie Chen? – CBS has finally settled on a lineup of Rose and O’Donnell. and interestingly, have as part of their mission, decided to focus on – get this – actual news.  No more endless banter between anchors.  No more meteorologists hamming it up with cheering fans on the street.  No more cooking segments. Just news.

It’s working.

True, CBS This Morning still ranks third among the three major morning news programs, but it is the only one that’s growing.  For a good article on the show and the philosophy of executive producer Chris Licht, click here.

My son and I have gotten into the habit of tuning into the first twenty minutes of CBS This Morning. No commercials.  No lengthy interviews with talking heads.  Just a quick summary of the seven or eight most important news items of the day, often with the benefit of CBS’s trump card, John Miller, who has to be among the most intriguing reporters on television.  When there are news stories regarding law enforcement, as there have been lately, he alone makes it worth tuning in.  Charlie Rose at times shows his age (71), but more often than not does the job he's known for: cutting to the chase by asking pointed questions.  Nora O’Donnell does something few other anchors have the guts to do: re-ask a question after it isn’t answered the first time around.  Jim Lehrer, take note.

So now, after my son and I get our news and weather (with no Al Roker!), we have breakfast and discuss the news items of the day.

Not a bad way to spend the morning.