A pennant is a narrow flag flown by ships at sea. Some just indicate the ship is in commission, other indicate the presence of a senior officer. In baseball September is the time recognized as the "pennant race." Win it, and you fly the championship pennant the next season.

But how is it a pennant race if you don't earn a pennant by winning it? Technically these are division titles and wild card races, not a pennant race. Win a division and you just get to play another week or more. Division title? Yeah, that's exciting. Let me warm up some skim milk and drink a toast to that.

Alot of people are excited about the RedSox and Yankees, who are supposed to be battling for the pennant. What they are battling for is a division title. The winner goes to the playoffs. The loser will be the wild card in the American League. And go to the playoffs.

The truth is the Beantowners and Bronx Burglers were in the playoffs as soon as the ink dried on the checks their management wrote to nuke the rest of their competitors into submission. The Devil Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles (yes, Virginia there are still Orioles in Baltimore-of a sort) were mathematically eliminated on opening day.

So maybe I should be excited about the Mets and Phillies? Pretty much the same deal. The loser is probably the wild card although it is a closer question. The Cubs and Brewers, Diamondbacks and Padres matchups will probably produce just one playoff team. Meanwhile nobody is paying any attention to the Indians and Angels, who may just have the two best teams in baseball.

Then you have the Rockies, Braves, Tigers, and Mariners. They can't win their division, but they could win the pennant. And just to make it more confusing, the Rockies are closer today to being a wild card team than the Brewers, who are trying to win a pennant (sorry, division championship).

Time out.

Baseball says there are pennant races underway. I say there aren't. Just a massive geographic farce where losers can win, winners can lose, and getting to first place in your division doesn't mean anything. So it's the RedSox, or the Yankees? So what?

You don't have to have the best team in baseball to win the World Championship. You just have to have deep pitching and good matchups in the playoffs. Remember the Cardinals, our most forgettable and regrettable pennant winners since the 1906 Cubs?

Aside from the confusion, why does it matter? It matters because baseball isn't football where each regular season game is a festival, an event leading up to perhaps the greatest one day spectacle in sport-The Super Bowl. And it isn't the San Antonio Spurs invitational, which staggers on week after week and intrudes into the summer. And it isn't the Stanley Cup playoffs, where the sport awakens into something worth following after slumbering through the winter.

We are getting cheated. Give us two league championships and two wild card teams.

A real pennant race would be a five team AL race with the RedSox, Yankees, Indians, Angels, and Tigers racing neck and neck down the wire with three of those teams going home. We are being denied a National League home stretch where every game involving the Mets, Phillies, Padres, and Diamondbacks meant something. And where the Cubs would be what they are, the sixth best team in the NL, chasing down the fifth place Colorado Rockies.

So, you still want inter-league play and worry you can't get it with two leagues? OK, we'll give you three leagues. And put the Mets and Yankees in the same league, and the Dodgers and Angels, and Cubs and WhiteSox. And build magnificent rivalries, cut travel costs, and give fans a chance to follow their teams on the road more often.

Give us something, anything, but this phony war with no winners and few casualties. Give us last place teams and not sixth place finishers in divisions. Give us a real pennant race again and a World Series that means something.

Mister Selig, tear down the walls of division and free baseball.