Passing Out Wildcards Left & Right?

Recently in the early morning baseball banter back and forth with my coworker I came across a very disturbing fact.

At first I didn't believe him and called my coworker delusional (I mean, he is a Dodgers' fan after all), but after we raced to "Google it" we got our facts straight- 2 teams per league will advance via wildcard!?

What in the world?

And perhaps the most ridiculous part is that they have a 1 game play off game to figure out who advances in the wildcard spot. (Because really, the normal season doesn't give each team enough opportunities?)

Lucky for me the Giants' magic number is now 2 so advancement looks pretty good. The problem is, now I need to worry about a 3rd place team coming in and taking the World Series title? (ie the Dodgers if they can get their act together....ha, I couldn't even type that without laughing out loud. Okay, maybe it was more of snicker.)

Ugh. We both had to check when this came into effect, apparently at the start of season. So just chalk this late discovery up to "living in Italy, where baseball ranks below soccer, volleyball, and basketball."

Let's Go Giants- I want to see you play while I'm home next month!