Get Rid of Interleague Play

Interleague play.  The first year it was done I loved it.  It was a nice novelty, a nice way to switch things up and add a little jolt of life to the game.  On paper its win-win for everyone, the fan gets to see different superstars, the owners make more money, and in the end, the league gets a little more attention.  The problem is, for all the good it brings, there isn’t a more poorly executed idea in all of sports.

I completely understand why Bud Selig did it.  It’s his job to grow the game and create as much revenue as possible.  Having the Mets play the Yankees six times a year is a no brainer.  What better way to create a fan frenzy?  The media will hype it up, the fans will buy tickets, and everyone in that region will have their eyes fixed to the weekend series. 

Sure, having the leagues mix it up takes away from the tradition of the game, the World Series becomes a little less epic, especially if the two teams play each other during the regular season, but baseball fans are going to watch the Fall Classic regardless.  This doesn’t bother me, I like the fact that we can see the Mets and Yankees play each other every year.  Instead of arguing about who the better team is year after year, like we did in the past, they settle the debate for us every summer.

Like I said, on paper it seems great. 

One of the great things about baseball is that over the course of 162 games only the truly great teams can overcome all the adversity that occurs during that long season.  There are no soft schedules; everyone from the division has the same obstacles and the same chance to succeed. Right?  Well, that’s the way it used to be, before 1997 when Interleague play was introduced.  Since then it has destroyed- yes, destroyed- the parity of the game. 

If interleague play is to continue a lot of things are going to have to change to keep the playing field level and balanced.  First and foremost, the scheduling must be fixed.  It’s bad enough that teams from the same league play different outside opponents, but when you have teams from the same division playing different interleague games, the problems become immense. 

This creates an uneven situation when determining division winners, especially in the National League Central because they have six teams while everyone else has four or five.  Another great Selig screw-up, but that’s another article.  For instance, when paired up with AL East, the Cardinals may play everyone but the Red Sox, while the Brewers get everyone but the Orioles.  Or in other words, while the Cardinals are beating up on the Orioles the Brewers are fighting through a series in Boston.  Not fair.

Then you have the “Natural Rivals” games which creates an even more lopsided playing field.  Each team has been assigned a natural rival that they play six times a year, which is a novel idea, but the inequities are tremendous.  Staying in the NL Central, the Cardinals Natural Rival is the basement dwelling Royals while the Reds are paired up with the one of the American League’s best, the Cleveland Indians.  If the Cardinals sweep and the Reds get swept, that can mean the difference between the playoffs and staying home for the fall.

The schedules run on a cycle, so the league’s argument is that these things tend to level out over the years.  Granted, this does take into account the fluctuating talent levels from year-to-year.  It’s quite possible to be stuck playing the best division year after year.  Just look at the Rays, last year they were the whopping boys of the Major Leagues, this year they are one of its finest teams.  Even if it does tend to even out of the years, try to explain that to a fan after his team misses out on the playoffs by one game to a team that got paired up with the Giants way back in May.   This becomes an even bigger issue in the Wild Card Race. 

I’m all for the idea, and I even like that one of the teams is playing out of its natural element.  All they have to do is make sure teams from the same division play the same schedule.  Sure the money and the media attention is nice, but at the end of the day Selig’s biggest responsibility is to make sure that everything is fair, and in this regard, he failed.  Isn’t that why there is a big to-do over the steroid issue, because some people altered the playing field in their favor?  Then why is it that Selig has done the same for certain teams?  There’s been enough criticism on the system that he knows its faults by now, so why hasn’t he moved to change it?  Three or four games out of 162 don’t seem like much in May, but come October it’s everything.