With this year's shameless money grab upon us, how do you guys feel about interleague play? I don't know how much I like it, at least the way it's set up now. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the Red Sox usually do awful during it (excluding last year's 16-2 or something like that), but I don't really see the point. If you want the teams to play each other, do it like all the other sports and just have them all play each other. I don't like only playing certain teams, especially with the Wild Card. Thoughts?
I like it,but i think it is set up unfairly for some teams. I guess in all fairness it should be set up like Football where they play a different division each year.
I've always hated it, but hate it even more now, since they've changed it so that it is no longer the case that each division plays another division. This year, for example, the Mets and Braves have much harder interleague schedules than the Phils do, and that is ridiculous. Back in the pre-cable/sattelite TV days there might have been an argument that this allows fans to see players they normally wouldn't, but that argument holds no water any longer. Interleague play and making the All-Star game determine home field in the World Series are IMO two of the stupidest things baseball has done in recent years.
It's dumb, I hate American League baseball and especially playing the Yankees each year. Inevitably these games turn into playoff like 4 hour affairs with 5 million pitching changes. I think at first it was a genuine event but does anyone really care anymore after years of the teams playing each other?
I like it...gives everyone something to get excited about in the middle of the season, and nourishes rivalries. No downside. A more balenced schedule would be nice, but that has more to do with scheduling than interleague play itself.
That has become the biggest difficulty with interleague play, and it's not really MLBs fault. It's by virtue of the fact that the NL Central has 6 teams and the AL West has 4 teams. So that way, you have an imbalance because then teams have to play teams from other divisions to balance out, and that creates the inequity you are talking about.
I think its kinda crap, MLB attempting to up attendance in towns that suffer a bit from it, since its the only abnormal thing most of these teams will experience during a mundane 162 game schedule. I'd love to see it gone. Or at the least CONSIDERABLY cut down. Its total crap.
Don't like it.... while I don't mind the wild card so much I really don't care for I.L.P. I hate AL baseball and I hate having to see my team adjust to it.
The same way you guys feel about the AL is the way I feel about the NL, so I'm in agreement. I'd rather chew on a yard of aluminum foil than watch a pitcher hit. The whole attraction of a Subway Series for me as a kid was that it looked like it would never happen. Now it happens every year. I thought 2000 was special (regardless of the outcome) but still diminished. It must be even worse for a fan of a team like the Sox. There's not even a cross-town rivalry to look forward to. At least places like NY, Chicago, and the Cali teams have the attraction of the other team's fans in their stadium. The All-Star determining the home field advantage is stupid. Granted, it's worked out for the AL more times than not, but it doesn't change the fact that it was yet another move by the worst commisioner in sports that just reeked of suckage. And I've always hated the Wild Card in baseball. Even though it worked out for the Yankees, it's still garbage. It's a side-effect of the retarded level of expansion that watered down major league pitching talent.
Yeah the red sox rival is a team that hasn't been in boston for over 50 years, and who they had never played until ILP.
it's fun for the fans to a certain extent......but serves no real purpose and is pretty unfair in the way it's set up. and since there's really no fair way to set it up they ought to get rid of it. personally, my interest is limited to the Yank series, I could care less about the Twins, Sox or whoever else the Mets are playing this year
I like watching pitchers hit as a novelty, so I guess that's the only thing I like about interleague play. But if I had to watch it every game I'd go insane. Why do you hate the Wild Card? I personally LOVE it. It keeps so many more teams in the race much deeper in the season. Otherwise the last 3 or 4 weeks might be close to irrelevant.
That's fine if you're a scrub team that can sneak into the playoffs and maybe fluke a WS win, but the WC is one of the huge problems with the baseball playoffs. I mean, they play 162 games, by far the longest season of any sport, and the reward for dominance over those 162 game is...1 extra home game, and maybe playing the WC, as long as it's not from your division. Baseball needs to eliminate the WC and give the team with the best record in each league a first round bye.
What about the other way, where say a team wins the division with 110 wins, the second place team has 102 wins and the other division winners have 90 wins each? Why should teams get screwed just because they play in a division with a team that has a fluke year? What if the Braves had one more win than the Mets last year? Would you have been fine with trash like the Padres and Cardinals (regular season anyway) making it and the Mets being left out?
The goal should be to win your division. Instead of having the Mets/Braves battle it out for the division title this year it won't even matter because the loser is going to take the WC anyway. I think it hurts rivalries .
