I want to be outraged; I want to be delighted. I want to rage against the final pillars of tradition being blown to bits; I want to heave a sigh of relief that we’re no longer married to hoary standards of “we’ve always done it this way.”

I’m in conflict. One half of my brain is furious at the trial balloon Rob Manfred floated last weekend in Williamsport, Pa., when he suggested that the inevitability of an expansion to 32 reams might necessarily bring about the reality of profound realignment. The other half says: It’s time, that the schism of American League/National League was born strictly out of commerce and not divine inspiration, and so should its dissolution.

Let’s take a brief journey together so we can talk this through.

1961-62: The American League, followed by the National League, expands from eight teams to 10. St. Louis, landlocked (unless you count the Mississippi River) in the middle of the country, was considered the west coast, even though it sits 1,850 miles east of the Pacific Ocean.