Sunday, June 06, 1999
Like it or not, interleague play succeeding
Only baseball could find bad in a good idea
BY TIM SULLIVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Interleague play is such a bad idea that only seven major-league games managed to draw at least 40,000 fans Friday night.
Just 56,175 spectators braved the South Bronx for the Yankees and the Mets, and only 49,213 faced L.A. traffic for the Dodgers and the Angels. Except for stirring interest, forging rivalries and creating revenue, baseball's grand experiment is a dismal failure.
Interleague play ought to bring us lower ticket prices and flatter taxes, closer parking and cleaner air. It ought to be all things to all people — the double switch and the designated hitter, self-cleaning gutters, fat- free fudge. It should cure cancer, improve radio reception and deliver Anakin Skywalker from the dark side of The Force.
Otherwise, why bother?
Why tinker with tradition if every single team doesn't experience a dramatic surge at the box office and a standardized strike zone? Why seek more regional matchups if your particular region doesn't happen to include Ken Griffey Jr.? Why attempt something new when September pen nant races can still be pre-empted by pro football?
“Interleague play is of no use except to entertain the fans,” Yankees manager Joe Torre says.
Entertain the fans? Outrageous.
Change? God forbid
Among the peculiar charms of baseball people is their quickness to quibble with any departure from the status quo. St.Louis manager Tony La Russa dared to bat his pitchers eighth last season in an effort to arrange more baserunners for Mark McGwire, and the resulting outcry suggested he had spray-painted the Sistine Chapel.
Build a better mousetrap, and baseball is bound to smell a rat. Rather than refine interleague play, many people within the game would prefer to shelve it.
“I think the novelty of it has worn off a little bit,” asserts Texas manager Johnny Oates. “If it's up to me, I'd say drop it.”
“It doesn't do anything for the game,” McGwire said. “It's screwed up the schedule and hasn't had the notoriety they thought it would. I think we should go back to the way the game of baseball is supposed to be played.”
McGwire presumes that baseball is supposed to be played in parallel universes, with the National League and American League mixing only at the All-Star Game and the World Series. The problem with this view is that it prevents the industry from making maximum use of its best marketing tools — the players.
McGwire's appearance Fri day night at Tiger Stadium attracted 40,794 spectators, more than twice Detroit's average attendance. Cleveland's three games at Cinergy Field last season drew more people than the seven preceding home games or the seven subsequent home games. Overall, interleague games averaged 7.8 percent more fans than same-league games last season.
Only in baseball could an innovation that improved business be abandoned because it had not improved business enough.
Nothing is perfect
Sure, there are problems with interleague play. In order to preserve such strong regional rivalries as the Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox and Reds-Indians, many less attractive matchups have been re peated. Rather than rotating divisional opponents, as the NFL does, baseball continues to match the East, Central and West Divisions against the corresponding divisions in the other league.
Thus, Griffey never plays in a National League ballpark east of Denver while the Reds alternate home-and-home series with Kansas City and Minnesota. This kind of programming makes about as much sense as a television network scheduling reruns during Sweeps Week, yet the same schedule format is already in place for next season.
Interleague play also creates some troubling competitive issues. Because the Reds play six games against Cleveland and the Mets play six games against the Yankees, both teams could lose ground in the standings for the sake of gains at the gate. Should the Reds lose a playoff berth by one or two games, their turnstile count against Cleveland could be poor consolation.
“We've created some imbalances,” said Katy Feeney, the National League's Vice President and schedule authority. “But some people will say there's an imbalance because you might face some teams in your league in the other division twice on the road and once at home. You could talk to five or six different people on the same club and you could get five or six different schedules.”
All of them would have some merit. None of them would please everybody. Life's like that. So is interleague play.
Enquirer columnist Tim Sullivan welcomes your e-mail at tsullivan@enquirer.com.
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 Like it or not, interleague play succeeding
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