NOT WILD ABOUT WILD CARD ... AGAIN.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

This could have been one of the most-exciting final weekends that baseball has ever known, but there's a big if involved.

If this were 1993.

Here's an exercise in frustration for you.

Take the 2000 contenders and their won-lost records, realign them in the four divisions that existed before the wild card came along to subvert the very principle of the baseball regular season, and this is what we'd have been able to anticipate as the climactic action began Friday night:

--San Francisco and Atlanta taking the National League West race down to the wire, tied with 95-64 records as they each went into three-game series against Arizona and Colorado, respectively.

--The New York Mets giving chase, three games behind St. Louis in the NL East standings, as the teams began three-game series with Montreal and Cincinnati, respectively.

--The New York Yankees clinging to leads of half a game over Cleveland and 3 1/2 over Boston in the AL East as the desperate three faced three-game series against other teams, and the possibility of a crucial Yankees rainout-makeup game tacked on.

--Only in the AL West would the division championship not be in doubt as Friday dawned. The Chicago White Sox would have clinched the night before when Seattle lost to Texas.

In all, fans of seven teams would still be on the edges of their seats, wondering whether they'd make the playoffs.

Instead, under the current format, with six divisions and two wild-card prizes, this is what baseball gives us for a final weekend:

--San Francisco running away with the NL West, St. Louis running away with the NL Central, Atlanta safely home in the NL East, and the Mets celebrating their second-place finish in the NL East because they earned the wild card.

--Chicago running away with the AL Central, the Yankees about to put away Boston in the AL East, and the tension of the see-saw AL West race between Seattle and Oakland dissipated by the likelihood the loser would go to the playoffs anyway by outfinishing Cleveland.

Add it up, and under the 1993 alignment, seven teams would have their Octobers mathematically in doubt. Under the current set-up, the corresponding number is four, and this poor excuse for a pennant race puts all the focus on the teams with the sixth-, seventh-, ninth- and 10th-best records in the major leagues.

Is it any wonder the nation will be watching the NFL today, not MLB (formerly known as ``baseball'')?

This is not meant to suggest that we should go back to the way baseball did things before the 1993 expansion - back when school children grew up believing Atlanta was a western city.

This is meant to demonstrate that expanding the available playoff spots doesn't necessarily sustain greater interest in September, as commissioner Bud Selig and like-minded owners intended. It's as likely to achieve the opposite effect.

Yes, we're attacking the wild-card system again, and this time with more ammunition.

If you think 2000 is a bad year for wild-card proponents, wait until 2001.

Next season's schedules are out, and there's an important change, with added emphasis on competition within the divisions. The Dodgers, for instance, will face their NL West rivals as many as 19 times each (up from 13 on the so-called balanced schedule) and face teams from the Central and East no more than seven times (down from nine).

This will create more-meaningful division races. But it might make a joke of the wild-card races because teams from different divisions are likely to play schedules of vastly different difficulty.

Before Friday, the NL West teams were a combined 41 games over .500 this season while the NL Central teams were 54 below and the NL East teams were six below. It doesn't matter too much because the schedule is relatively balanced. But if a similar disparity in division strengths occurs again next season, we could find, say, the Dodgers losing a close wild-card race to Cincinnati because they had to face tough opponents more often.

That goes against the point of the long baseball season, which is that the breaks even out over 162 games.

The solution, ironically, is more expansion, adding two teams to bring the total to 32, allowing four geographical divisions per league and playoffs among the champions.

It would be fair, the owners would have the three-round playoffs their accountants demand, and although there would be no guarantee of final- weekend excitement, we've seen this year that there's no such guarantee under any alignment.

Don't even ask: The alignment has not been invented that would have got the 2000 Dodgers to October.

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Photo: Although Marvin Benard couldn't get a handle on this ball, the Giants easily got a handle on the National league West chamionship this season.

Matt York/Associated Press