MLB to re-examine"World Series" evaluation method

Serious questions are being raised as to the accuracy of Major League Baseball's "World Series," a system intended to determine the country's best baseball team, after the barely above-average St. Louis Cardinals received the distinction of "champions" last Friday.

"It's time to update this system," said Casey Benson, chairman of the newly formed "Better Baseball Committee," a task force set up by the MLB to determine alternative methods of team evaluation. "Here you have the Cardinals winning 83 games in a joke division and two weeks later, they're having a championship parade? This system isn't just inaccurate, it's immoral."

The concept of a computerized poll in the model of College Football's BCS has been viewed by some as the ideal alternative.

Statistician Nicholas Conte explains, "The World Series is an archaic relic in desperate need of a 21st century makeover. A comprehensive computerized poll would be able to take into account, say, the fact that Jeff Weaver and Jeff Suppan are severely below average baseball players, whereas the World Series bases everything on a couple of their fluky pitching performances and some bloop singles by David Eckstein. I mean, how much sense does that make?"

Still, Benson says, don't expect baseball to ditch the World Series anytime soon.

"Baseball has too much invested in the World Series both financially and in terms of tradition to admit that the current system simply doesn't work anymore. It's a shame, though, cause now the country will be left without a true national champion, forever wondering what could have been."