We've settled on Part A of the equation, which is that the wild-card system in baseball has proved to be not only a successful venture, but a consistently engaging one. So let's roll ahead to Part B:

	The Cubs in the playoffs? There would need to be a 16-team playoff in the National League for that to happen this year.

How long before the beast sprouts another head?

What baseball has right now is a functional little wild-card system that results in eight of Major League Baseball's 30 teams (three division-winners and two add-ons per league) move on to the post-season. That is roughly six more teams that the hallowed "traditionalist" probably wants (whoever and wherever he or she may be), but it's at least four fewer teams than advance out of any of the other three major pro sports leagues in the United States.

You think the baseball owners don't have their pride? They're getting their financial clocks cleaned by their peers in the NFL, NHL and NBA on this issue. There are millions of dollars in discretionary American money in circulation out there, just waiting to be forked over at the first sign that the Boston Red Sox might actually have a bead drawn on the post-season.

Too soon for another round of playoff expansion, you say?

Come. Come with us to the Dark Side.

There is one sure way to be marked as truly naive in baseball, and that is to assume that this current crop of franchise owners would leave even a single stone unturned in their zeal to spruce up the bottom line. It's axiomatic with these guys: If there's a buck floating in the breeze, it's going to be a 30-man scramble off the side of the redwood deck trying to spear it.

Consider the recent circumstances. The owners have just emerged from a labor negotiation that, while at least theoretically better for them in the long run, left both them and their players vulnerable to an angry, fed-up public.

Overall attendance this season is running nearly 4 million fans behind last year's total, which means the numbers were in decline well before a strike date was ever set. The Cleveland Indians are down more than 500,000 fans. The Pittsburgh Pirates, down more than 570,000. And Bud Selig's Milwaukee Brewers are down nearly 800,000 in just the second year in their new stadium, thus proving that all the bells and whistles in the world can't compensate some fans when they're staring at a non-competitive team every night of the week.

In short, the time is right for a fan-friendly goosing, to say nothing of Hoovering as much side cash as the market will bear. And what better way to do it than to address this very competitiveness issue in the most direct way possible?

This year the owners took the hard road, wrenching grudging concessions from the players in a negotiation that took too long, enraged too many people and probably accomplished too little for anyone involved. Frankly, there's no future in collective bargaining in the players union; it's the strongest union in sports history. It's like talking to a wall, assuming your walls make millions of dollars a year for playing games and staying in really nice hotels.

There is an easier way around the competition issue, of course, and the other leagues found it long ago: Simply declare more teams worthy. Think of it as fiat money. In the same sense that a ruling government can claim its money is worth a certain amount because it says so, a sports league can admit more teams to the post-season because -- well, hell, just because.

Baseball has its traditions, true, but who are these owners to suddenly start respecting tradition? (And while we're on the subject: Anyone hear the players complaining about the last round of post-season expansion? The money spends just fine, it turns out.) If adding two teams per league to the old format worked out so well, what's to prevent baseball from going from eight playoff teams to 12? Do we hear 16?

If baseball switched today to a format of three division-winners and three wild cards per league (the NFL's system before it recast its divisions this season), the American League playoffs would feature New York, Minnesota, Oakland, Anaheim, Seattle and Boston. The N.L. lineup: Atlanta, St. Louis, Arizona, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston.

For production value, the format in this season alone would add valuable TV markets to the mix. Aesthetically, as any owner worth his golf-club membership would tell you, once you've let in one wild card, what's the big deal? The fans get extended rooting interests in several cities. More players get post-season checks, to say nothing of a shot at the World Series.

Do we find the subject mildly offensive? As longtime baseball lovers, we certainly do. Do we expect the current system to stay in place? Not even remotely.

And can we count on baseball's ruling junta to safeguard the century-old values of the game, take things gradually and leave a buck or two lying on the cherry-oak bar up in the luxury suite?

(Insert punchline here.)

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com