Baseball's title not for sale this year

Everybody can find something to like in this baseball postseason.

For the first time since the 1995 strike, baseball's version of the Final Four won't include any team that started the season among the top five in payroll.

And depending on the winner of the Atlanta-San Francisco series, it's possible the league championship series will play out without even one team that finished the season with a top-10 payroll.

Those numbers might have warmed the hearts of the game's most miserly owners. But commissioner Bud Selig was careful not to read too much into them.

When he picked up the phone Sunday night at his home in Milwaukee, the Braves-Giants game was playing on a TV in the background. After years of trying, Selig finally managed to shoehorn a few cost-containment measures into the most recent labor deal reached between owners and players.

But the commissioner wasn't about to claim those modest advances had yielded a new order in baseball so soon.

"I was taught many years ago that the only predictable thing about baseball is its unpredictability," he said. "And that's all this proves."

This postseason proved the Yankees' starting rotation was too old and the defending World Series champion Diamondbacks were too thin to overcome a few key injuries. Their only consolation is that a half-dozen wealthy neighbors -- the Red Sox, Rangers, Dodgers, Mets, Mariners and Indians -- didn't make it far enough to have their shortcomings exposed.

Teams for sale

In what might be a more revealing sign of the times, the owners of the last two AL teams standing, Minnesota and Anaheim, are trying to sell. And NL semifinalist St. Louis, long one of the sport's most stable franchises, is even now probably figuring how to parlay this postseason appearance into a few more concessions from the city to help the club build a new stadium.

"We've spent a long time, too much time, in fact, talking about off-the-field issues," the commissioner said, "and so far we've had a pretty good week on the field. I'd like to keep the focus there.

"Besides, the Cardinals have been through an incredible season, considering all the emotions and the heartbreak in the wake of Darryl Kile's death," Selig said. "Let their fans savor that."

Fans of the Twins, as well as irony, can savor the possibility that one of the teams Selig planned to eliminate is still around.

"The country wants to see the poor teams win and play," Minnesota outfielder Torii Hunter said after his team won Game 5 of the division series Sunday in Oakland.

"I was rooting for the Angels. It's going to be low-budget LCS. We all make minimum wage out there."

In a scene that could have come from the movie "Major League," Twins owner Carl Pohlad -- who favored the contraction plan and still wants to sell his team -- popped into the clubhouse a half-hour after the win.

"We had a bunch of young guys that played their hearts out every day. We have to win the next two rounds, and I'm not even going to talk about contraction," Pohlad said, "until then."

Selig plans to wait even longer.

"I'm delighted for them. It's a great story, just because of the way they're playing," he said. "I'm enjoying watching them.

"The rest of it, the history of what happened before, it's in the past now."

If only it were that simple.

Baseball is set up to have a great postseason on the field, even -- maybe especially -- without the Yankees. But Selig & Co. ignore all the rest at their own peril. Some first-round playoff games were shuttled to the ABC Family Channel, and the truth is nearly two-thirds of the teams are still looking to cut payroll, not add players.

Enough teams have lost enough money so that some of the revenue-sharing funds will be used to cover losses, something sure to create even more resentment between the haves and have-nots. The Yankees, Mets and other big spenders who missed out on deep runs through the postseason won't take kindly to subsidizing teams doing just that while paying out the minimum wage.

Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press.