I may have said this before, but...
I haven't changed my mind about interleague play at all: I've always thought it was a bad idea, and I still think it's a bad idea. I don't like the notion that teams competing with each other play very different schedules, and I've never really seen the charm of getting to see a team every few years. Then again, I've spent most of my life either in minor league towns or cities with teams in both leagues, so I suppose if you're in Cleveland or Seattle it might be different. But I've never really seen the attraction.
That said: the one thing that I've found that I do like, sort of, is the way that the interleague block breaks up the season a little. I like the way that it inserts a sort of marker in mid-season, sort of the way the All Star break does. It's not enough for me to make it a good idea, but I like that aspect of it.
Of course, the latest idea of moving a team from the NL to the AL would kill that off, too.
I live in DC and am a Nationals fan (yes, there are those) and I do like getting to play the Orioles every year. However, I agree that it's not enough to balance out what I don't like about it. National League teams shouldn't have to sully themselves with a designated hitter except for the (at most) four games the league champion has to during the World Series.
ReplyDeleteBeing from the Seattle area, the only time we ever see the Cubs or Braves or any other NL club is through interleague play. San Francisco is 800 miles away.
ReplyDeleteArizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Atlanta --- all those fans would never see teams and stars from the other league without going on vacation if not for interleague.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know...but how many people really care about it? You can see the teams on TV; you can see the players when they wind up in the other league. I know I never planned out my trips the ballpark, when I lived in Oakland, based on wanting to make sure I had seen every team. I don't know...for Giants games, I mostly just would go whenever I had the time to see a day game (I rarely went to night games at Candlestick, had to be some particular reason); for the A's, it would be based on my schedule and then, secondarily, on whether the visiting team had guys from my roto league. I might have wanted to see a top pitcher...but even then, I would want to see Clemens or whoever every chance I got; it wasn't like I checked those off a list and then wasn't interested after that.
I think I'd be a lot more okay with it if it didn't stretch out for three weeks and involve an awful lot of "who cares?" games. One weekend a year, focused maybe on the geographic rivalries, would help this go down a lot smoother.
ReplyDeleteEarlier this week, my Redbirds played the Orioles. Why bother?
There's an initial stand-alone weekend (this year, May 20-22), and then a two week stretch plus a weekend stretch, which is June 17 through July 3.
ReplyDeleteI'd be happier if they lopped off two weekends, leaving one solid two-week stretch. Of course, if you did that you wouldn't be able to do the "rivalry" serieses twice plus a more-or-less full division vs. division rotation.
My guess is that they'll never give up the home-and-home rivalry thing, even though I'm assuming that it only really makes money for a handful of teams.