I said it last year and I’ll say it again: I want Major League Baseball teams hacked.

In fact, the more, the merrier.

Contraction is a good thing.

I liked baseball because a) The coaches dress the same as the players.

(Can you imagine Utah basketball head coach Rick Majerus doing that? Standing there on the court, his, ahem, copious figure falling out of his baggy shorts and tank top. A white headband around his sweaty dome. The only way that’s funnier is if he dressed like the Utes circa 1989. Belly swaying like an up-turned tortoise trying to right itself when he bends down to pinch his Reebok pumps. Majerus straightens his back and his shorts stop mid-pelvis . Oh man. That’d be cool.)

I also liked baseball because b) baseball had a regular season that mattered.

Sixteen (16!) of the 29 NBA teams make it to the postseason.

Soon, there will be more bowls in college football than Snoop Dogg could handle.

And the ISU men’s basketball team was rewarded last year for its 25-5 finish the same way some team named Hampton was: With a single-elimination game in the NCAA tournament.

Which the Cyclones lost.

But baseball, ahh baseball, was once four divisions of cute, packaged precision.

A 154- or 162-game season – depending on the era – often came down to the final two or three games.

Or one game, as in the one-game-we’re-tied-for-first playoff madness that decided who moved on, and who moved to Mexico for the winter.

Like in 1978, New York at Boston.

How big was that game?

I’m not a Yankees fan or Red Sox fan. I wasn’t even born yet. And I’m still including it in my column.

In July of ’78, the Red Sox had a 14-game lead over the Yankees.

In September, New York trailed by four going into a four-game series at Boston.

The Yankees swept.

The Sox wouldn’t die. They won 11 of their last 13 games to pull abreast of New York at season’s end.

A one-game playoff at Fenway ensued.

In the top of the seventh with two out and two on and Boston leading 2-0, Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent stepped in.

Dent hit five home runs in ’78; the last was a routine fly ball that made it over the Green Monster in Fenway that afternoon.

New York went on to win 5-4.

The Red Sox won 99 games in 1978. The Yankees won 100. The Yankees played in the postseason.

“Life is pain,” says Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride. “Anyone that tells you differently is trying to sell something.”

Cary’s right.

That was the beauty of baseball: it accepted only the best.

You battle all spring, summer and early fall for the best record in your division, and then, in the postseason, you face a team that did the same in theirs.

Enter the Era of Teal, the current era of baseball.

The Era of Teal is more than the Florida Marlins’ birth in 1993, though some believe that’s where it originated.

It is a philosophy, a way for baseball teams to go about living.

At its core, the Era of Teal is about expansion and entertainment.

It is about men whose checkbooks are as loaded as their egos, persuading baseball to give them a team their city neither needs, nor is interested in. (See the Marlins, Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks.)

No worry though for the subscribers to the Era of Teal.

They simply build more of an amusement park than a ball park.

Who wants to sit in left field when you could be swimming in left field?

Ball games are boring. Why can’t more guys hit more home runs?

Who wants two rounds of postseason when we could have three?

Don’t whine. Contraction isn’t the loss of baseball’s integrity. That happened six years ago when the Wild Card and three divisions per league were put in place.

Don’t believe me? Look at this year.

The Cardinals had a one-game lead on the Astros with three games to play.

And Houston’s remaining games were in St. Louis.

Think about that before you read on.

The Astros won two of three games, but instead of a one-game playoff to decide the pennant, like in say, ’78, the Cardinals played the Diamondbacks two nights later in one National League Division Series while the Astros played the Braves in the other.

Hell yes, Bud Selig wants to get rid of the Twins so his Brewers can enjoy better TV ratings.

Hell no, the Twins don’t deserve it.

Still, I think four teams should be disbanded.

Then four divisions could return and the Wild Card could die.

Then a piece of baseball’s timelessness is salvaged.

Paul Kix is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Hubbard.