On this date in 1997, Major League Baseball made an egregious error. The league began Interleague play, which ended a 126-year tradition of separating the major leagues until the World Series.
Baseball was built on the years of history and the bats of giants including Ruth, Gehrig, Wagner, Mays, Aaron and Clemente. Baseball was synonymous with tradition; then it went to pot.
Sure Interleague play is fan-friendly. But who cares when the Brewers play the Royals or Tampa Bay faces Washington?
Honestly, there are only four Interleague series that people care about. They are all intra-city series: New York - Yankees and Mets, Chicago - Cubs and White Sox, LA - Dodgers and Angels and the Bay area: Athletics and Giants.
Oh sure, a few more intriguing match-ups exist, but almost everything else is second-class to the aforementioned series.
There are numerous pros and cons for Interleague play. As a baseball purist, my biggest complaint about the ten years of NL-AL regular season baseball is that the World Series has been robbed of its mystique. A great tradition had endured, but that has long been forgotten.
So with everything else going on this weekend, be sure not to miss this the prime Interleague series, Texas at Cincinnati. I'm bursting with anticipation.
2 comments:
I'm less inclined to go as far as you here on interleague play. Sure there are some stinker matchups that nobody wants to see, but that's the cost that Twins and Nationals fans must pay so that the rest of the country can watch the good interleague matchups. However, I do agree that there are a lot of crappy matchups. The reason is simple: there is no parody in baseball. I know this strays far from your purist streak, but if baseball could become a true competative sport (like the NFL, which is at least twice as cool as baseball) these kinds of matchups would be much more fun. The joy of interleague play is, after all, the matchup of regularly competative teams i.e. the Yankees and the Mets. The only reason that's fun at all is because such a matchup avoids the humdrum, record padding divisional games that nobody wants to see. The only obvious exception here is the NL West, which is mediocre from top to bottom and thus competative and exciting to watch. I'd much rather two so-so teams duke it out for 9 innings every night than watch the Yankees bash the Devil Rays 19 times a year.
The Yankees being beat by anyone makes great baseball. The more the merrier I say.
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