Well this weekend marks the second weekend of the season where we roll out our favorite "rivalries" for interleague play, but why? Okay, thirteen years ago, this was a really interesting and novel idea, why wait until the world series, let's play the other league, see teams that we've never seen before, watched some rising stars we haven't heard of yet, and so on and so forth, and it worked in principle. Indeed, as any baseball person will tell you interleague play is good for baseball, it cuases more people to watch, more people on average show up to the games which of course means more money in the pockets of owners and players alike, but is it really better for baseball? Sure as a yankee fan at first the novelty of playing the Mets was fun and interesting, but who really cares at this point? For certain, while an interesting idea and a good way to boost interest in the game when it was sagging, the novelty and usefulness of interleague play has run its course. For the most part it causes lackluster series matchups (who cares about rockies-tigers?) and most importantly it takes away from the great peannant race in which major league baseball is predicated on.
As I mentioned above, while there are some series that are intriguing, for the most part interleague play produces some pretty lackluster series. For sure, for every white sox- cubs series, there is five twins-cardinals series, royals-diamondbacks series and rays-brewers series, do any of those really sound that interesting? Sure these are teams that your hometown team doesn't usually play, its novel and can be interesting, but it was only novel a decade ago. Now in 2009 I've seen the yankees play the dodgers play twice, the phillies two or three times, and so on and so forth, it doesn't really excite me that much because they're kind of irrelevant. Yeah okay so you beat the world champion phillies a few times, but if you're not even the best in your division it wont matter a whole lot. Perhaps I'm alone in this, but the prospect of going to say Cleveland or Detroit a few times a year instead of once sounds way more exciting. Indeed, there was a time not long ago when the Indians and the Yanks had a pretty lively rivarly going on, for years battling one another all year, now? We go there once a year, once a year! That's the same amount of games we go to the Mets ballpark! At least for me novelty is no prize when it comes at the stake of more important american league battles that have far more juice to them.
The other aspect of interleague play is forcing pitchers to hit when they haven't done it all year or for many for years at all. Now I realize that this sounds hypocritical of my love of hitting pitchers, but its just plain unsafe to have a pitcher who hasn't done any running of the bases or hitting to just step in the box against major leaguers. In an ideal world they'd always be doing those things and the DH would be gone, but this is not an ideal world we live in and as such pitchers just don't do those things and as a consequence end up looking foolish. The best example of this is of course Chien Ming Wang, a guy who never hits or runs the bases last year got a freakish injury on his foot that he really hasn't recovered from. This just may be a yankee fan's sour grapes, but it doesn't suprise me all that much if the same were to happen to any other american league pitcher who just isn't used to doing this things and all of a sudden is forced to do on the highest level of baseball played in the world.
Of course they'll never get rid of interleague play because baseball doesn't make its money off of baseball traditionalists like me, and its a shame because it really takes away from the great pennant race. Formerly the main feature of the baseball season, there used to be no playoffs at all up until the world series because it was seen as sort of redundant. Indeed, it was the feature of the regular season, the 154 or 162 game schedule where you played the rest of your respective league over and over to decide who was the best in baseball instead of some silly five game series. But now the glory of that pennant race has been sullied by interleague play. Instead of having to play its peers a large chunk of a team's schedule is against teams that have no stake in the pennant at all. Some teams can get a lucky break and play a shitty division that year en route to a dozen or so easy wins to pad their win total while some other team ends up playing a tougher division and in turn could get decimated in the long run. Of course its baseball and to be the best you need to beat everyone so you could argue otherwise, but at least for me the luster of interleague play has long since faded, give me back my pennant race.
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