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Thursday, 4 July, 2002, 04:00 GMT 05:00 UK
Baseball's interleague debate
The Mets v the Yankees is baseball's biggest draw
It began as an experiment in 1997, when owners tinkered with baseball traditions in an attempt to bring excitement back to a sport that had lost so many fans during the 1994 players' strike. For the first time ever, teams from the National League played American League teams in the regular season. This caused outrage among baseball purists - of whom there are plenty - but achieved the desired effect of bringing more people into the stadiums. The owners deemed interleague play a success and have kept it on the schedule ever since.
Attendance at interleague games was as high last season as it had ever been, but the perception among the players and owners was that the experiment was getting stale. To try to inject freshness into the concept, commissioner Bud Selig gave interleague play a new look this season, matching teams from different divisions against each other. That meant the NL West played the AL East, the NL Central played the AL West, and the NL East played the AL Central. It was a move designed to create some intriguing never-before-seen match-ups but, with few exceptions, it instead created mostly never-want-to-be-seen match-ups. For every Yankees v Diamondbacks or Dodgers v Red Sox series, there were Royals v Expos or Rangers v Pirates to temper the excitement.
More than ever, interleague games began to feel like glorified spring training games. The fans still seem to enjoy interleague play well enough, as general attendance figures rose during the interleague portion of the schedule, but most of the players are singing a different tune. "I hate it," the Mets' Mo Vaughn recently told CNN. "I always thought that was the best thing about the World Series. That was the intrigue. Now that's gone." "I think the novelty has worn off, to tell the truth," said the Giants' J T Snow.
San Francisco shortstop Rich Aurilia echoed his teammates sentiments. "We've done this for five years, and it's not as interesting," Aurilia said. But for all its faults (watching AL pitchers attempt to swing a bat is downright painful), there is one thing that will most likely keep interleague play alive in 2003. It allows local derbies to take place outside the World Series, and pitting cross-town rivals against each other never gets old. The total amount of interleague games should - and hopefully will - be decreased, but the excitement created by a Cubs v White Sox or Mets v Yankees series dictates that a few series each year is worth shelving some of baseball's tradition. So all the purists and players who want to do away with the idea should get used to it. The success of the local derbies, at least in the eyes of the fans and the commissioner, is enough to keep interleague play around for a while. |
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