Wild cards spice pennant races.

Byline: Larry Stone

SEATTLE _ If there's one thing that recent playoff history has proven, it's that there is no stigma to being the wild-card team.

Last year, the American League's wild-card entrant, the Boston Red Sox, were five excruciating outs away from making it to the World Series, before losing Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees on Aaron Boone's 11th-inning home run.

In the World Series, the Yankees met their match in the Florida Marlins, the National League's wild-card team. And in 2002, the Yankees also were eliminated by the wild-card entrant, the Anaheim Angels, who went on to win the World Series in seven games over the San Francisco Giants.

In the week that Bud Selig got re-upped for three more years, with nary a protest from the Swift Boat Veterans, it is only fitting to take a look at what could very well stand as his most inspired innovation: expanded playoffs and the …