Global Scoreboard: How Baseball Standings Quietly Rule the World (and Other Delusions)
The first thing to understand about baseball standings is that nobody outside the contiguous 48 really cares—except, of course, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Dominicans, the Venezuelans, the Cubans who defected, the Canadians who politely pretend, and the Dutch who somehow snuck into the last World Baseball Classic with a roster of Caribbean passport-holders named…