Is It Any Wonder?

Every year at this time, teams from both leagues line up to load up on trading deadline talent before July 31. It's that perennial sign that says: "We think we're in it. We think we can win this damn thing." Most times, teams are smoking more crack than Whitney Houston on a bender thinking they are a contender. But there are a few teams from year to year that actually are, and most years, especially of late, those clubs come out of the American League.

Lets talk about what the word "contender" means. In the American League, a contender is 15 or 20 games over .500 at the break. A contender has three starting pitchers that anyone outside the home city have ever heard of. A contender puts 35,000 asses in the seats every night and has five-tool players and closers and set up men who are old enough to drink.

In the National League, on the other hand, a "contender," apparently, is anyone who is still able to field a team after the All-Star Break. A contender is anyone fourth place or above in their division. A contender is anyone that at any point in the season, has won more than one game in a row. In the National League, the Phillies, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Brewers, Braves and Marlins are contenders. None of these teams is remotedly playing .500 ball, by the way, except the Rockies, and lets face it, I have a better chance of scaling the face of the Grand Canyon than they do of actually contending for a World Series Championship.

So, is it any wonder that the National League is the red-headed stepchild to the American League right now? If you are a free agent in the off-season that will garner any value, would you not want to go play with the big boys? Only the Mets are going to pay you in the NL. The Phillies might, but only if mediocrity placates your personality from head to toe.

So, is it any wonder that any real talent that might find itself available at the deadline ends up in the American League? In the AL, 10 teams are toast already, so they aren't truly afraid to deal inside the league. But in the NL, with everyone thinking they are still alive, they don't want to give up real talent to anyone that might be fighting for that all-important wild card.

For instance, the two names most mentioned as the heat turns up this summer are the Phils Bobby Abreu and the Nats Alphonso Sorianio. If the Phils decide to bow out and deal their on-base machine for prospects, there is not a shot in hell he ends up anywhere in the National League. He'll be involved in the big rivalry up north, or he'll end up in Anaheim. Same with Soriano, who may have an outside shot at ending up a Met, but more realistically will head back to his home in the AL. So, say they are both dealt. What just happened? The National League welcomes more young, "talented" but unproven prospects to water down the baseball further, while the AL adds two proven, All-Star caliber studs.

And we wonder why the AL dominates the NL? At this point it's nothing but a pattern, and there's seems to be a lot of cloth.