Now that interleague play has concluded for another year in MLB, it’s appropriate to ask: Does it still work for the league and perhaps more importantly, the fans? SPLICE TODAY doesn’t think so.
That said, and here’s one of those curveballs, I can’t stand inter-league play, even though it pumps up attendance and allows fans to see star players who were once a mystery aside from the All-Star game (which, of course, has devolved into a meaningless exhibition game instead of a proud showcase) or the World Series…I just don’t like the disruption of the season’s rhythm, the fake “rivalries” cooked up by MLB schedule makers—sure, the Cubs and White Sox make sense, but the Rockies and Tigers?—for the sake of novelty and profit.
…What bothers me is that when playoff spots are at stake I’d rather have my team, the Red Sox, play more times against their competitors; the Sox, for instance, won’t square off against the Tigers again in 2008. Lucky for Boston that Detroit was off to a feeble start when they played their paltry seven games, but when the wild card is up for grabs in September and both teams are possible contenders for that slot, it seems like a waste that 18 games were blown on inter-league play. It’s a losing battle, and hard to argue when the Washington Nationals drew their best crowds of the years since opening day playing the Orioles, but I’ll continue to carp.
I’d have to disagree. The article makes a good point that a series like the Tigers-Rockies is a fixed rivalry set up by the league to generate money, but the buzz in Chicago when the Cubs play the Sox is fantastic. And the Angels and Dodgers just had one of the tightest series of the season, which I could only imagine was fun for fans on the West Coast.
With a 162-game schedule, interleague does nothing to interrupt the flow of the season and it has a minuet barring on how the postseason shakes out. The season is so long that it provides a fresh change of pace. I still think it works for both the fans and the league.
