Asked how he would describe his team’s season, Buck Showalter immediately replied, “Like that Disneyland ride.” He was referring to “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”

Much to their delight, though, the ride for the Baltimore Orioles has lasted much longer than the couple of minutes the wild ride of Mr. Toad takes. Five months into the season, Showalter, the Orioles’ manager, and Dan Duquette, their general manager, awoke Wednesday to find the Orioles in a rare position. They were tied for first place in the American League East and were tied for first place in the A.L. wild-card standings.

No post-season slot is guaranteed the Orioles with a month to go in the season, but they have played well enough to attain a distinction that had been achieved in only one previous season in the wild-card era. According to Elias Sports Bureau research, the simultaneous ties between the Yankees and the Orioles in the division and among the Yankees, the Orioles and the Athletics in the wild-card race mark the only time besides two similar developments in 2005 that such circumstances occurred after Sept. 1.

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Football, the baseball commissioner says, used to own September. He suggested that it no longer does, the result of the addition of a second wild card in each league. The month of September has just begun so it would be premature to proclaim Bud Selig correct in his view, but based on what I have seen the past month or six weeks, I think he has a better than even chance to be right.

I say this as an early critic of the wild card. Call me a traditionalist, a dinosaur, short-sighted or anything you want; I’ve been called a lot of things. But I always believed that to get to the post-season, a team needed to finish in first place. Second-placers need not apply.

I grew up in the 16-team world of baseball. Two leagues, eight teams each, the pennant winners playing in the World Series. Clean cut, simple, straight forward.

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On the subject of Felix Hernandez, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: He is the best pitcher in baseball.

I bring it up now for two reasons: his performance in his last three starts and the Washington Nationals’ mean-well but questionable pampering of Stephen Strasburg.

Pampering pitchers is the prevailing practice today. Don’t let them pitch too many innings, don’t let them throw too many pitches in a game, don’t increase by too many the number of innings they pitch from one season to the next. The pampering, of course, is intended to protect young pitchers’ arms. But if the idea is intended to protect and preserve young pitchers’ arms, why are 20 young pitchers from major league rosters among 30 pitchers recovering from reconstructive elbow surgery (a.k.a. Tommy John surgery) and why are 6 other young pitchers among 9 pitchers recovering from shoulder surgery?

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