Interleague play — save for a Pirates-Yankees makeup game — has concluded for the 2008 season. You’ll pardon my lack of grief over this situation.
Maybe it’s me, but I just can’t get too jazzed up about American League and National League teams meeting during the regular season. I didn’t care much for it when it began in 1997. I considered it pure pandering on the part of the game’s executives, trying to come up with something “for the fans” that would help assuage some of the lingering unpleasantness from the work stoppage that ended the 1994 season prematurely. Sure, the idea of the regional rivalries playing out during the regular season had a certain novelty flavor, but that’s less than two-thirds of the current teams. Other matchups offered little of a compelling nature.
The Brewers played an interleague schedule as an AL team in 1997, but were switched to the NL in ’98 when MLB added Arizona and Tampa Bay, creating a 16-team National League and a 14-team American League. From my perspective, this is where baseball screwed it up.
The way it is scheduled now, there’s always one lone NL series going on when everyone else is playing interleague. Since interleague play was already a reality prior to the 1998 expansion, it would have made more sense to keep the Brewers in the AL. Then you’d have two 15-team leagues and play a sole interleague series every day.
It’s very simple: a single interleague series complementing a regular schedule of games will always be more “special” than the other way around.
Moving the Brewers to the NL was done for one reason: Bud Selig wanted a NL team in his town because he’d been a Braves fan in the 1950’s. Kowtowing to his wishes created a situation that, while not completely untenable, left a lot of room for improvement. Interleague play is likely here to stay, and as long as Bud’s in charge, change is not on the agenda.
