Columnist Dean Juipe: In case you missed the season …

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

For motivational reasons, unless you live in a city that has a team it's difficult to keep pace with everything that happens during the course of a 162-game, six-month Major League Baseball season.

The nuances and details of the marathon escape most sports fans, the result of a season that is just so longggggg.

Many a good fan stays only marginally in touch and prefers to check back in when the games take on a greater significance and the playoffs arrive. Which, as it happens, is today.

It's a busy time of the year with the National Hockey League season opening this week, National Basketball Association training camps about to open and football in full swing. But baseball will get its due, to the extent that NBC will be televising a playoff game tonight rather than the Bush vs. Gore presidential debate.

The NBC mind-set: Orators may come and go, yet baseball at its best is irreplaceable.

And it has been a lovely season thus far and one even those from the old school can embrace. Home runs may have been up on a per-game basis but the 2000 season didn't come with the offensive carnage that some would say was belittling the record book and ruining the sport.

Instead of getting 65 home runs from Mark McGwire and 63 from Sammy Sosa as baseball fans did last year, this season the andro-free McGwire was held back by injury and Sosa was kept to a more reasonable 50.

Everything about the season seemed more reasonable. There were flirtations with hitting .400 but .372 proved to be tops. There were Triple Crown threats but no intrusions.

There were no no-hitters and no managers fired, at least to the season's final day.

There were stellar seasons by the usual strong teams, Atlanta and the New York Yankees, although each won fewer games than the previous year and the two-time defending world champion Yanks will open the playoffs on a seven-game losing streak.

There were also three teams -- St. Louis, Seattle and the Chicago White Sox -- that made dramatic improvements and reached the playoffs after finishing 1999 with losing records. The Cardinals did it without McGwire in the lineup every day, the Mariners did it despite losing superstar Ken Griffey just prior to Opening Day and the Sox led the American League in victories after going 75-86 the year before.

There was a small-market team that excelled despite its limited payroll, as the Oakland A's won 22 of their last 29 games to reach the playoffs although their $32 million in combined salaries is exceeded by 24 other teams.

Conversely, there was a team that followed the master plan and won a division title its first year in a new stadium, as San Francisco's players and fans took nicely to Pacific Bell Park.

There were the usual twists and turns, topped by a return to form from one of baseball's most dependable allies.

The Chicago Cubs, who last won the World Series in 1908 but who went 90-73 just two years ago, found their way home to the National League cellar and finished in a tie with Philadelphia for the worst record in the majors.

Traditionalists found the Cubs' descent, in spite of hiring a new manager, reassuring. A sport that overwhelms the calendar needs its staples and the Cubs are one.