RETHINKING `COMPETITIVE IMBALANCE'.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

You could say it's a crazy baseball October. Or you could say you expected the unexpected in a playoff season when World Series contention runs eight teams deep.

``This is the best eight teams I've seen in the postseason since they've had (the expanded) playoffs,'' Reggie Jackson said in Anaheim on Saturday after the Angels surprised the New York Yankees in a first-round series. ``Every team would be an outstanding representative as a world champion.''

Reggie is right.

You could say there were four upsets out of four division series, considering the higher-seeded teams lost every time - the defending American League-champion Yankees, the defending World Series-champion Arizona Diamondbacks, the Oakland A's, the Atlanta Braves. Or you could say there's no such thing as an upset when everybody is worthy.

However you interpret the wave of well-matched series, which set up a next wave in Angels-Minnesota Twins and San Francisco Giants-St. Louis Cardinals, you have to think it casts a new light on ``competitive imbalance,'' the concept behind this summer's owners-players clash and the near-strike.

This October must make absolutely no sense to commissioner Bud Selig, whose view of everything in baseball is distorted by the dollar signs etched in his spectacle lenses.

The way Selig would have handicapped it, based on the idea that payrolls determine results, we shouldn't have been watching the Angels, Minnesota, Oakland, St. Louis and San Francisco in the playoffs to begin with. Heck, if Selig had been allowed to follow his contraction plan, we wouldn't have been watching Minnesota in the regular season. And there's no way the Angels ($61.7 million payroll at the start of the season) knock off the Yankees ($125.9 million), the Cardinals ($74 million) sweep the Diamondbacks ($102.8 million) or the Giants ($78.2 million) beat the Braves ($93.4 million).

Under Selig's money-talks world view, it's inconceivable that of the 15 highest-paid players in the American League this season, only No. 14 Tim Salmon of the Angels won a playoff series. No. 1 Alex Rodriguez, No. 2 Carlos Delgado and No. 3 Manny Ramirez didn't even make the playoffs. And it's mind-boggling that, of the highest-paid players at the 10 positions in both leagues this season, only left fielder Barry Bonds of the Giants won a playoff series. Eight didn't make it out of September.

Both sides in baseball, from the front offices to the union hall, have come around to Selig's belief in the need to help the poorer teams by taxing the richer teams, the idea behind the 12th-hour contract agreement that saved the season.

Let's say they're right. Let's say, now that the rich clubs' payrolls are over $100 million, that too many teams without the audience to raise half that much money go into opening day without a prayer of a pennant. Let's say, even though some very smart people disagree, that the view from April is a dreary one of pointless games between hopeless teams in Montreal and San Diego and Pittsburgh.

Then let's also say that the view from October couldn't be finer.

If baseball lacks ``competitive balance'' in the regular season, it has it up to its ear flaps in the playoffs.

The first round expanded to four series in 1995. From then to 1999, one of the 20 division series went the full five games, and six were won by the lower-seeded team. But the past three years, six of the 12 have gone the distance and eight were so-called upsets.

This year, it's one upset after another, according to the regular-season records and the payrolls. It was supposed to be Yankees, A's, Diamondbacks and Braves in the league championship series. Instead it's Angels, Twins, Cardinals and Giants, all great stories and all good teams.

Hope Bud enjoys it as much as the rest of us.

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Photo:

Russ Ortiz, a Montclair Prep of Van Nuys graduate, helped the Giants complete a sweep for the underdog teams in the first round

John Bazemore/Associated Press