How did life go on before it existed?

The Wild Card has become a baseball staple. This is a long way from the initial purists' view of this innovation, which was that it would simultaneously destroy the sanctity of the regular season and the postseason.

Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig can chuckle about this now. The Wild Card was his baby, although at first the critics appeared to believe that it was an illegitimate child.

"It has been an incredible success, no question of that," Selig said. "It has worked extraordinarily well. But when I think of the pounding that I took at first: 'Oh, Bud's ruining the game,' or 'Oh, that'll never work.'

"Now when people talk to me about it, they're saying: 'It's wonderful. What would we do without it?'"

The basic answer to that question is that Major League Baseball would be doing less business without the Wild Card. It is no accident that, with the Wild Card in full flower, MLB is headed toward its fourth straight season of record attendance.

It can easily be argued that, with the increasing influx of talented players from Latin America and East Asia, baseball has its broadest, deepest talent pool ever. That makes the game more popular. But the Wild Card spreads around what Selig refers to as "hope and faith." More clubs have a chance to qualify for the postseason. More fans have a reason to remain intensely interested.

Once again, with the season in the home stretch, at least half of the 30 clubs can gaze at the standings and believe that they are in credible contention for the postseason. Yes, this has meant a reduction in the number of do-or-die, all-or-nothing pennant races. But the whole movement of baseball over the past 15 years has been toward broadening the possibilities for more franchises and thus, for more fans.

The result is that September is literally bigger than ever in baseball. Bigger crowds. Bigger ratings. Bigger, broader fan interest.

"We used to deed this time of the year to football," Selig says. "No more."

And the success of the Wild Card is not simply a matter of more clubs having a legitimate chance to reach October. What has happened to the Wild Card clubs in October has validated the process.

If the Wild Card teams all entered the postseason and were promptly swept out of the Division Series, then the argument could be made that these two extra teams had merely diluted the quality of baseball's postseason. But the opposite has occurred.

In each of the last five Octobers, Wild Card teams have either won the World Series or at least reached the World Series. What does this tell us? Two things, at least.

• Rather than watering down the postseason, this concept has enriched the postseason. And it did so as a reflection of baseball's increased parity, or, more politely, baseball's increased competitive balance.

• The Wild Card concept has not only made September more interesting for more fans, it has made October more compelling as well.

Where once there was room in baseball's postseason for just two teams, and later four, now eight does not seem to be too many. Baseball is more balanced than it used to be, and it cannot only absorb these additional teams -- it can welcome them with a sense of genuine anticipation.

And the reality is that, due to the varying level of success from division to division, there will be Wild Card teams with better records than division winners. Both leagues this season are likely to produce Wild Card winners with better records than, for instance, the winner of the NL Central. Will these Wild Card teams be less worthy because they did not win a division? You don't have to be the seamhead equivalent of Albert Einstein to comprehend the numbers on this one.

This is not to say that 10 teams or 12 teams in the postseason would be that much better, although the commissioner notes that there are people whispering just that in his ear. Nothing breeds expansion like success.

The baseball postseason does not need to resemble the come-one, come-all approach of some of the other major professional sports. The two Wild Card team approach seems to have worked supremely well, and the league should not mess around with a good thing.

Funny how embracing the Wild Card idea is now turning into the baseball traditionalist's position.

Traditionally, baseball doesn't do innovations very easily, and this one's arrival was accompanied by all the requisite kicking and screaming. But the Wild Card has become not only a fact of baseball life, but actually a useful, entertaining fact of baseball life.