Remember Joe Buck’s call from game six of the 2003 World Series?

“Posada, slow-roller right side, Beckett picks it up, tags Posada and the Florida Marlins are World Champions! The Marlins have stunned the Yankees, shocked New York, and this improbable team on an improbable ride, they end up on top, winning in six games against the Yankees.”

Don’t get me wrong; the Florida Marlins were a good ball club that year, 91 wins good.

But in the format in which Major League baseball’s playoffs are currently held, wild card champions are on equal ground with the division winners. There is no reward or incentive for teams to win their division, and players are constantly quoted as saying they do not care if they make the playoffs via the wild card or via a division title. Shame on Major League baseball for allowing “Division Champion” to become such a meaningless accolade.

It’s unfair that in 2003 the Florida Marlins, the wild card winner, had the same chance of winning the World Series as the Atlanta Braves, Florida’s division-mate that had 10 more wins en route to a National League East title.

Coincidentally, the New York Yankees also finished 10 games better than the Marlins in 2003. Most Yankees fans remember how that season ended, as so eloquently described by Buck above. But, did that improbable team on an improbable ride that shocked the Yankees really work as hard as they should have had to for their championship? No.

2003 was the Marlins’ second World Series championship season in seven years. Both times, the Marlins entered the playoffs as a wild card team and on the same footing as division winners. Here’s to the denouncement of the phantom fourth division.

There is a wild card round in the NFL playoff systems, and Major League baseball needs to adopt a similar structure.

First, create a second wild card team in each league. Now, instead of having a wild card team directly face a division winner in the Division Series, it can instead face another wild card team in a separate five-game post-season series held before the Division Series called the Wild Card Series. Home field advantage goes to the wild card team with the better record, as is expected.

Via this format, wild card teams have to play extra games to make it to the World Series, thereby fatiguing the team and throwing its rotation out of order. By making the road harder for wild card teams, you make it easier for division winners, a necessity to restore integrity to division titles.

To make time for the extra playoff games, shorten the already lengthy regular season back to 154 games. The owners will be resistant to losing four games worth of revenue, but there will also be more highly-profitable playoff games to host — additional incentive for owners to assemble winning teams, increasing competitiveness around the league.

Then, whichever team emerges victorious from the Wild Card Series advances to play a rested division winner in the Division Series, and from there the playoff structure resumes as normal, with one exception: the Division Series is extended to seven games.

Why extend the Division Series, you ask? Ahh, now we’ve reached an inherent problem with the game of baseball, and you will have to check back on Tuesday for the explanation.