Michael Rushton
Phanatic Magazine
This won't be the first time you read the following line, but it needs to be said again anyway: I hate interleague baseball.
Hate is a strong word, but I feel comfortable using it here. Much like John McMullen hates the DMV, or Jared Trexler hates the Philadelphia Eagles (see any Trexler Steelers article), I hate interleague play.
For starters, as a colleague of mine pointed out, it does sell tickets...in two cites.
That's it. New York and Chicago. Maybe on the west coast, when the Athletics play the Giants, but that's it. Baseball will point to ticket sales this weekend and say it works everywhere. But let's schedule the Royals and Rockies during the week -- not the weekend when a lot of ball parks traditionally fill up any way -- and look at the sales.
I hate interleague baseball. Just like Steve Lienert hates the Eagles' blue and gold anniversary uniforms and Tim McManus hates the NBA (okay he doesn't hate it, but he is the less cynical member of the group).
It cheapens the All-Star game even further. The mid-season classic has already been downgraded enough as it is, home-field advantage be damned, and interleague play was one of the proprietors.
It used to be a yearly treat to see the best of the two leagues get together on the field and play some ball. Now, combined with horrendous fan voting, it is a mere distraction on a lazy July day.
If I wanted to see Scott Kazmir hurl against Miguel Cabrera, I would lick my chops for the All-Star game. It's a matchup we wouldn't get to see otherwise. Now, I get possibly two chances every year.
That's good, right? Not really, now its just another game between two bad clubs.
And along those lines, we should never be able to discuss how two World Series teams fared against each other in the regular season. It just shouldn't happen. Like the All-Star game, it makes the Fall Classic lose some mystic.
I hate interleague baseball.
1 comment:
It was a novel idea at the time whose time has past.
It makes the schedule for certain teams more difficult when it comes to the Wild Card race, as evidenced by the last 2 years when the phils had a much harder slate of games then NL West teams.
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