Interleague Play Is Unfair, But It Ain't Going Away

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2007

It was an odd moment. Larry was speaking and seemingly everywhere, Mets’ fans were nodding in solemn agreement.

You see Larry, best known as Braves’ third baseman Chipper Jones, a guy who named his daughter Shea because he hits so well in Flushing, was dissing the rather crazy interleague schedule the other day and all Mets’ fans could say to their favorite verbal target of the last decade was “tell it, brother.”

The baseball equivalent of the lions and lambs lying together, Larry Jones and Mets’ fans showing solidarity on an issue, any issue, shows how Mad Hatter crazy the scheduling of Interleague games has become.

“I don't think there's any question it’s not fair, but I don't think Major League Baseball is concerned with fair,” Jones told the Associated Press. “If you play the top teams in the American League and everybody else doesn't, it's pretty unfair.”

Larry’s argument is that his Braves have to play six games against the AL East-leading Red Sox, plus have series against the Tigers, Twins and Indians — in fairness, he notes that the Mets have six with the Yankees as well as series against Tigers, Twins and A’s, all four Al 2006 playoff teams, while the Phillies get series against the Royals, Blue Jays, White Sox, Indians and Tigers. Because the Braves have to play the Mets, they have the toughest strength of schedule of any team in baseball; the Mets, unable to play themselves are stuck with the third toughest schedule, in theory. Since the Mets’ were the best team in the National League, playoffs notwithstanding, they should have the toughest schedule — even though they generally had to play among the toughest schedules even when they were lousy.

Obviously, not all winning percentages are created equally, and in reality, one of the AL East teams, the Yankees or Blue Jays maybe, have the actual toughest schedule with more than 140 AL games. But you get the point — interleague schedules are random, and yes, unfair, and maybe they shouldn’t be.

Other leagues, such as the National Football League, manage to give the bad teams slightly easier schedules (less so than a couple of decades, admittedly), so it’s possible to do it. But baseball insists on locking in a half dozen rivalry series, home and home, as is going on tonight between the Mets and Yankees, which complicates matters. The Braves have a tougher schedule than the Phillies because they must play the Red Sox six games a year (some wags might argue that the Mets are finally lucking out with their linkup with the Yankees, after being a punching bag for the better part of a decade and someone needs to explain to me why the Phillies don’t play the A’s every year — or did the whole Shibe Park thing just slip people’s minds?).

If it were up to me, I’d probably put Interleague baseball to death or at least make it once every few years, save the World Series. But like the unanswered prayers for demise of the designated hitter, it’s not going to happen.

It would be more work for MLB, but last place teams should get to play other last place teams in interleague. Or maybe they could do it by payroll, or something. But it is clearly time for Katy Feeney and her minions to stop pulling the schedule out of decorative headwear, or worse, their posteriors.

With all the crap, the steroids, the fan-hostile moves, some of us still care about the game. It would be nice if baseball would, you know, try to acknowledge it once in a while.

Should Bud Selig attend Barry Bonds breaking breaking home run game? Probably. I mean, either the record counts or it doesn’t. If it does, as grand poohbah of the game, Selig needs to be there, pose for pictures with ol’ fat head (and before you start scribbling your “you’re a racist” emails, and crayon-laced notes, Bonds has a giant head thanks to the “clear” and the “cream,” so I get to call him that, which is far nicer than some of the other things he should be called) and endure the post-game press conference when every other word will probably be “steroid.”

Sorry, Bud, you signed up for this. You need to man up and take your lumps.

I’ve lived with MLB’s MLB.TV for six weeks now and for the most part, it’s OK. The video quality of the 700K feeds is OK, but not quite up to the standards of satellite or cable TV. And before you ask, I have screamingly fast broadband, over fiber optic from Verizon, which offer roughly 10 times the bandwidth needed to run the higher resolution version of MLB.TV.

MLB.TV mostly works, but it pales in comparison to other video offerings on the Internet. the guys at Major League Baseball Advanced Media need to spend some quality time with the beta of Joost — which is a much better delivery system, with much clearer, sharper video, and none of audio synch issues MLB.TV has. And don’t get me started on even better systems out there using MPEG-4.

Once again, MLB delivers a product that is a day late and dollar short. Sadly, it’s about what most people would have expected.