Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Interleague Play is Stupid and Not Good for Baseball


No, I'm not just writing this because I'm an Oakland Athletics fan as opposed to being a San Francisco Giants fan.

First things first, congrats to all Giant fans and their team for recently sweeping the A's. The Giants are the team to beat for sure, the best team in baseball right now. You can argue all you want, but there is no better Major League team then the Giants right now, they've won three out of the last five World Series, including last years World Series victory over the Kansas City Royals.

Interleague play was first introduced to professional baseball in 1997, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleague_play) and it's still incredibly lame. Yes, I understand certain fans and maybe players liking cross town / city rivalries, but those fans opinions are lame to me. I still understand their misguided reasoning for liking interleague play, but once I heard the late great Bill King criticizing Interleague play, I immediately agreed with his thoughts and infinite wisdom on the subject. Bill King, rest his soul, was the greatest Oakland sports announcer, if not the greatest sports broadcaster of all time.


King, like myself because of his opinions hates interleague play.  Interleague play is for the World Series King said, and I agree. To give an example, the Giants just whooped the Athletics; great fun for the team and their fans, but If I were a Giant fan, especially now, I would have rather seen a series between them and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As of today, the Dodgers have a half game lead in the Nation Leagues West, and the Giants could have taken the division lead or perhaps gotten swept, and be down by four and a half games, maybe have swept the Dodgers and been up by four and a half games?

Stupid interleague play cuts into real baseball and blinds the minds of some fans. King would not even announce A's games when it was interleague play time. King's whole point was that it's not real baseball and seriously; what real Giant's fan in their right mind wants to see them playing the last place American League Milwaukee Brewers the next three games. If it weren't for interleague play, the Giants might be playing their current set against the Dodgers, or perhaps the first place team in the National League East , the Washington Nationals (conference rivals).

While the Giants are currently playing a meaningless series against the Brewers, they could  be playing the first place NL central leaders, a team in their conference, the St. Louis Cardinals, which would make for much better baseball.

What if you're a New York Yankee fan, the winiest team (currently leading AL East) in the history of baseball and had to suffer through them playing the hapless Philadelphia Phillies in June, a team more than 20 games under .500 and not even in the Yankees league; in essence, a preseason game nearly midway into the season, pointless.

While the Yankee's cross town rivals, the New York Mets are making noise and only two games out of first in their division; what pure baseball fan in their right mind wants to see the Mets vs. Yankees in the regular season?

This year in particular, the Mets instead of playing the Yankees at home and away could be playing a three or four game set against their first place division foes, the Nationals who lead them by 2 games. Think about it, the Mets and Nationals vying for first place in their division or playing meaningless games against AL teams in the regular season, again, ridiculous.

Granted the first place AL West  leaders, the Los Angeles Angels have a three game set with the NL Dodgers starting on the 31st of this month, a potential look at this years World Series rivals, but that's just blind luck on the morons who created interleague play, but if I was one of those morons now, I'd be promoting the upcoming three game series between the Dodgers and Angles like there is no tomorrow. I still hate interleague play.