I consider myself the truest of baseball purists. Whenever the media buzz starts about an impending change to the rules of the national pastime, the only conservative bone in my body gets as riled up and defensive as Rush Limbaugh at a gay pride parade.

The designated hitter is an abomination before God and man alike. Interleague play is unnatural. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s recent introduction of instant replay made me weep not only for my favorite sport, but also for my country.

So when FOXSports.com’s Ken Rosenthal reported last week that Major League Baseball will introduce a second wild card team starting this season, let’s just say my righteous indignation was audible for miles around.

The new system allows a fifth team from each league to reach the postseason. The two wild card teams will meet in a one-game playoff, the winner moving on to the League Division Series just as before.

This means a team which finishes third in its division could compete in the World Series. And since in baseball, more than in perhaps any other professional sport, any team can win any game, it’s inevitable such a team will eventually hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy.

Baseball enjoys the longest regular season in professional sports at 162 games, but this is not just because everyone likes watching as many games as possible. Due to the unpredictability of individual games, series or even entire months at a time, it’s important the sample size is as big as possible to avoid unlikely flukes.

A bad team may sweep a championship contender in any given weekend series. But over the course of a season, the records will probably average out and both squads will wind up where they belong.

So a multi-round, elimination-style playoff system is already flawed in theory because the sample size of a five- or seven-game series is generally too small to determine which is the “best” team. However, given the sheer number of teams competing in each league, it makes sense more teams should have a chance to compete for the title.

But instituting a standard one-game series at the beginning of each postseason doesn’t seem logical at all. It’s a decision made not to assist in determining the strongest team in the field, but purely to capitalize on the excitement of a football-style, winner-take-all showdown. It totally misses the spirit of baseball.

It also changes and cheapens the value of regular-season play. At the end of the 2011 season, the Boston Red Sox were in the middle of a free-fall collapse. At the beginning of September, the Sox had a nine-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the single wild card spot.

As they often do in the sporting world, though, the tables quickly turned and the Rays came storming back. Few fans will soon forget Tampa third baseman Evan Longoria’s screaming home run down the left field line at Tropicana Field to clinch the playoff spot for the Rays and send Boston home to watch from the comfort of their living rooms.

If this scenario had played out during this coming season, however, it wouldn’t have mattered. Longoria’s shot would have been just another meaningless hit, and the Red Sox and Rays would have met in a one-game playoff to determine who moves on. This obviously would have made an entire month of nail-biting drama utterly meaningless.

It’s true baseball is a business, and it makes sense the league would try to make as much money off TV spots as possible. Neither I nor the blusterous windbag Limbaugh would disagree with that.

But a delicate balance must be struck between the game’s integrity and its profitability if both fans and sponsors are going to be kept happy.

In the case of baseball, the camel’s nose has long been under the tent. It has to be stopped before it gets too much of the important stuff.

Alex Grotewohl can be reached at [email protected].