Drawing Parallels

In the four major American sports leagues, each team, with the exception of the odd NFL game once every few years, has two possible outcomes: win or loss. Everywhere else in the world, in their most popular sports, a draw (or tie) is not only a possibility, but can be celebrated. Sometimes, neither team deserves to win a game (but obviously, playoff games need results). And it is possibly unfair to a team that has dominated a game to have its efforts thrown away, without the possibility of honors being even on the day.

I especially feel that way about baseball, where it seems silly to play out every one of 162 games in a six-month season. Maybe that's somehow a view contrary to American custom, but sometimes life isn't simply wins and losses, as much as that means anything in a sports setting.

Recently, I've started to follow something else possibly un-American: cricket.

The second most popular sport in the world is the ultimate king of the draw, with a test match (the first and longest form of the game) many times going five days for six hours each day with a draw being the result. Interestingly, a draw and a tie are two different things. A draw in test cricket means that each side could not complete each of its innings, for a variety of reasons. A tie, predictably, is when each team has finished its innings has finished with the same number of runs. This outcome has happened just twice in over two hundred years, and it's easy to see why considering each team in a test usually gets 400-800 runs. Furthermore, these ties are known as two of the sport's greatest contests, while the first one is simply called, "The Tied Test."

Right now, the most famous series in all of cricket is going on, The Ashes, between England and Australia. In the first of the five five-day matches between the two countries (yes, 25 days and over six weeks), Australia was absolutely dominating, scoring 674 runs in their first and only time at bat before declaring (stopping because staying at bat would have taken too much time in a time-limited match) with four batsmen remaining for England to get out. On the final day of the test, Australia needed to get eight English batsmen out before allowing 220 runs, or have enough time left to bat and make up the difference should they have allowed more. The land down under did neither, and England drew the match.

All things being equal, England probably did not deserve a draw. However, the fact that a draw was there to be had (and was what England was gunning for from the first bowl of the day) made the last part of the match absolutely thrilling, and still gave Australia a result. It also was a turning point, as England won the next test, and drew the rain-soaked third. Australia will lose the series should it lose either of the next two matches.

The second test was concluding around the same time my beloved Texas Rangers were finishing up a series with the Twins. The last game of the series, one that the good guys needed to prevent a sweep, went to 12 innings before the Rangers won with a walk-off homer by Ian Kinsler. Despite the fact that my team won, I still thought that it was the type of game that would have been better served to be ended after a regulation nine innings.

Now, I'm not so much as naïve to think that extra innings will be done away with. It'll never happen. But it does present an interesting hypothetical, and one that can be worked out with some rearranging of the standings.

Here are the standings for the 2009 baseball season (as of August 2) if every game tied after nine innings was declared a draw. Note that a draw counts as no result in the winning percentage, rather than one half win and one half loss (ala the NFL system).

Under the no extra innings format, the lead in two divisions change hands with Boston going ahead of the Yankees and the White Sox jumping in front of the Tigers. The only playoff spot changing hands would be the White Sox instead of the Tigers, as they sit now. The most compelling difference of any division, even though nothing changes in the standings is in the NL West, where the Dodgers drop to having baseball's fourth best record due to their 10-3 record in extras. The Rockies not only jump out of a tie for the NL wild card, but become the NL's second best team thanks to a 1-4 record in 10+ innings.

This can only be a good thing, as the draw would not lead to drastically different results, even though it could be argued that strategy during a game would change and therefore change results.

All things considered, the standings would be not be all that different if draws were allowed, and pitching staffs could be saved from the possibility of an indefinite end and the need to find extra arms.