Oh, the perils of being a wild card

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Playing in the wild-card game and "making the playoffs" are not the same thing. Not if the "reward" for being a wild card is nine innings of win-or-go-home life on the October high wire.

"It didn't feel like the playoffs," said Brian McCann, a still-frustrated member of the Braves team that lost last year's National League wild-card game (aka., the Infield Fly Rule Classic) to the Cardinals. "I don't know how to explain it. I just feel like, you play 162 games, you win 90-plus, and all of a sudden, it's one game and you're home?

"I don't know how to explain it, other than: It didn't feel like the playoffs."

And we get that. In "the playoffs," as we've always known them, there's an ebb and a flow. Plot lines develop. Momentum builds. And an ugly couple of hours, in Game 1 of any series, doesn't instantly boot you off the postseason cliff. But in the wild-card game, none of that applies. None of it.

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Well, luckily for them, they're on the verge of accomplishing that mission. But somebody is going to have to play in That Game. And that means that over in the NL Central, we're witnessing a riveting three-team scramble among clubs whose biggest goal in life at the moment is to make sure it isn't them.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9694842/oh-perils-being-wild-card-mlb-playoffs