It’s rarely a good sign to watch the schedule before the All-Star break. That’s especially true in the National League Wild Card race, where the teams that entered the competition have gotten off to about as smooth and successful of a start as the non-leading role contestants in the go kart derby in The Little Rascals.
But you can’t help yourself. These games do still mean as much as any others, even if a brutal stretch in the schedule will be negated by a light stretch further down the road. And for those of us actually interested in the aesthetics of following baseball, rather than just toodling on a standings abacus, it’s nice to watch a baseball team that you think deserves to be in the postseason race, and not just the equivalent of the sprinter who qualified for the Olympics because they grew up in a country where nobody likes to run.