All too often, events drawing on two completely different aspects of the sports hemisphere–scandal and championships, Lance Armstrong's seven stripped titles and Game 7 of the NLCS–combine to create the great binary of sports.

By Mike Corasaniti

Two inevitable situations crossed Monday in the sports world. One event was exciting and full of potential for something classic, while the other was truly unfortunate and at times, downright embarrassing.

The National League pennant was decided after the NLCS’s Game 7 between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants. As MLB’s own Twitter account quaintly put it yesterday afternoon, “There will be a group of grown men pouring champagne on each other tonight.”

No matter what happened, no matter who won or lost the decisive game in California last night, there was celebration, champagne and the excitement for what was to come next.

Earlier yesterday morning, the Lance Armstrong Steroid Saga, and its years of accusations and dragging on, finally met its bitter, awkward end. As if they really needed to wait this long to execute the mounting evidence against him, the International Cycling Union, thanks to assistance from the USADA, officially stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles.

No matter what happened, no matter who officially came out on top in these court cases and investigations, there was not going to be any celebration, champagne or excitement for what was to come next.

At the very least, now we all have a little bit of closure. But what hurts the most about the Armstrong situation is the American standpoint of the scandal.

“This is a landmark day for cycling,” said Pat McQuaid, president of the cycling union in a statement. What stood as the downfall of one of the greatest American conquests in sports history is, to the rest of the world, “a landmark day.”

But that just goes to show the binary that can be so present in sports. Two unrelated stories in two unrelated sports could have such similarly resounding effects on its fans and critics. With one of the few similarities coming from the Game 7 and the seven stripped titles being that they broke on the same day, it can be amazing what we take from such stories in sports.

From the Giants and Cardinals, all we were looking for was a winner. Who would be crowned king of the National League and deemed worthy of facing Detroit for a world championship?

But with Armstrong, it seemed that all people were interested in was the loser. Would the union fall to the power of Lance and his incredible power? Or, probably more popularly towards the end, would Armstrong be stripped of everything that gave his fans reason to cheer for his incredible run?

Again though, that’s just the binary. Sometimes sports can literally lift you out of your seats while a few hours later it can break your heart. The most amazing part of it is how rarely those two feelings are separated. Baseball is about to enter its newest chapter of championship history while cycling is in the midst of its darkest days.

But it’s in that binary that fans should focus their allegiances. To some people, the steroid scandal of Lance Armstrong will go down as the top story of Oct. 22, 2012, while ignoring the dramatic meeting between two teams who simply refused to quit this postseason. But in looking at the binary, the contrasts and the yin and yang of sports, the scandal should always take a back seat when the champagne is flowing. 


This column can be seen in The Daily Campus

By Mike Corasaniti

As a Mets fan, I will be the first to admit that the idea of a second Wild Card team initially sounded appealing to me. I mean hey, the idea of fewer teams not making the playoffs definitely helped New York’s chances.

And when July hit, I will admit that I was still a fan. The Mets were not dominating anyone, but they were sticking around the top of their division, and with an additional playoff spot, it seemed that sticking around the top was all the team would need.

So I will admit that maybe I am a little hypocritical when I say that as soon as the Mets let their season go to waste, I realized just how ridiculous baseball’s new Wild Card format really is.

How in the world can a league with six months of play, where games are played at least six out of seven days a week, let the playoffs for some teams end after three hours? It’s heartbreaking.

“It breaks your heart. [Baseball] is designed to break your heart,” said Bart Giamatti, the seventh commissioner of Major League Baseball and a man that is much smarter than I. Giamatti was of course discussing how baseball lines up with seasons (with its blossoming coinciding with spring’s and its ending coming around the time of the first snow) and the new Wild Card game; but he may as well have been.

The most heartbreaking situation this year had to indeed come from the Atlanta Brave’s Wild Card match-up with the St. Louis Cardinals. Take away the fact the Cardinals deserved to win the game, take away the ridiculous infield fly call, take away my hatred for the Atlanta Braves, and you have an 88-74 team moving on to the next round of the playoffs past a 94-68 team. That’s heartbreaking.

Let’s look at playoff situations for some of the other sports leagues. In the NFL, teams face single elimination throughout the playoffs after a regular season of only 16 games, making the playoffs last as long as – for a team eliminated after one game – about six percent of the regular season. Compare this to the NBA and NHL, which both have 82-game seasons (in a world where lockouts don’t exist). Playoffs could end for a team after four games, or about five percent of the regular season.

The Major League Baseball season lasts for 162 three-hour games. That means for two teams under the new Wild Card rule, the playoffs last 0.6 percent as long as the regular season. So the question of how to fix the current system then goes to the question of whether or not expanding the one-game Wild Card series to three or five games would be a solution. But then things get complicated with over-resting the other teams and the whole idea goes out the window. Which, if it did, would also be heartbreaking.

Because in theory, allowing more teams into the playoffs is a terrific idea. It keeps more teams and their fans excited about August and September baseball, given the fact that there are simply more teams eligible for a playoff spot. But to get more fan bases excited for months before the playoffs, just to rip everything away after possibly less than a three-hour fluke of a game? Well, I guess that would be baseball. And if that happened to my Mets, that would break my heart. 



This article can be seen in The Daily Campus