Thursday, June 25, 2009

Interleague Play

Interleague play began in 1997 when the Texas Rangers hosted the San Francisco Giants. Since then teams from both leagues have been meeting in the middle of the season somewhere between 12 and 18 times a season pending upon scheduling. Interleague play like most things has its pros and cons, and sure enough every year around this time sparks the same debate about whether or not there should even be a DH in baseball or whether the two leagues are unbalanced.

Some Pros to the game having Interleague play are simple and can be broken down into the one thing. It attracts a bigger and wider audience to games. Even in economic time like this the Nationals just sold out all three games against the Boston Red Sox. Yes, that’s right I said the Nationals, a team on an average night that would not be able to draw half the crowd the have the past two nights. Another Pro for fans is that they get to see different teams come into town and play their hometown team. For instance I was fortunate enough to go to a Mets-Red Sox game earlier this year and watch David Wright and Carlos Beltran play at Fenway Park. That is something that I have never seen before and drew me to purchase a ticket to that particular series. Not to mention the amount of signs and people chanting about the 1986 World Series made the atmosphere electric at the ballpark. The last Pro that I will mention is that Major League Baseball is allowed to exploit the two teams two cities market, by setting up games between "rivals" like the Chicago White Sox and The Chicago Cubs the battle of north and south has been drawing major interest across the baseball world since the beginning of Interleague play. Another "rivalry" that gets used a lot is the Subway Series between the Yankees and Mets. These two teams have been battling for fan ship in New York for as long as baseball has existed.

Now for some Cons, the glaring Con is that the pitchers who have never batted before in the Major Leagues are forced to step up to the plate and take some hacks. Now occasionally we are blessed with a mistake, like Josh Beckett's home run in Philly but for the most part you either see a poorly executed bunt or a disgusting strikeout. I understand that this is part of the National League game but some of these American League pitchers have not hit since High School, never mind run the bases. Not all of these pitchers were like Micah Owings who played the Outfield in college. Next would be the un-even balance in talent. I understand that the pendulum of power swings from the AL to the NL, but recently the American League has simply been dominating the National League to the point of where the American league now had a 70 game advantage in the win-loss column. Lastly for the Cons I would be remiss to not mention the unbalanced teams in the two leagues which often leagues to strength of schedule questions for some teams.

In conclusion, for my money Interleague Play is worth the occasional ugly at-bat by a pitcher because of the way it opens the fans up to see both sides of the game. Not only does it open up their perspective from the stands but they can also relate to how difficult it is to manage in the two leagues and watch the different styles of play.

On a side note John Smoltz will be taking the mound for the Sox tonight for the first time in 21years without an Atlanta Braves Jersey on. For those of you keeping score at home I was 7 months old when Smoltz made his major league debut.

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