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Everything new becomes old: Where interleague baseball goes from here
Mike Piazza and Mark McGwire faced off on the first day regular-season interleague baseball when the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics battled it out. JOHN G. MABANGLO/Getty Images

Everything new becomes old: Where interleague baseball goes from here

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the advent of interleague play in Major League Baseball. You probably won't see much attention paid to this milestone for MLB, and that's because the regular-season battles between the American League and the National League have gone from being interesting midseason events between two teams who wouldn't normally see each other to something that's become a run-of-the-mill affair.

It's been four years since baseball decided to even out its leagues with 15 teams each, and ever since then there is an interleague series played at all times of the season. That move in particular dealt the novelty factor of interleague baseball a huge blow — to the point where this even meant that there would be interleague games played on Opening Day. If interleague play could somehow break the "sanctity" of Opening Day, then that meant the novelty was officially dead and gone.

This wasn't always the case, though. The excitement was palpable when the first round of interleague games was set to be played in mid-June 1997. Finally, we wouldn't have to wait until late October to see the Mets and Yankees square off against each other, nor would we have to act like their spring training matchups were a big deal. The Astros and Rangers could finally battle for supremacy in the Lone Star State. The Giants and A's no longer just had the 1989 World Series to go by. Plus, the Cubs and White Sox could finally play against each other, since there was absolutely no way that either of those teams would ever make the World Series anytime soon, right?

Those were just the obvious matchups, but you also had dream scenarios: stuff like Barry Bonds hitting dingers in AL ballparks, World Series rematches happening and the undeniable novelty of watching AL pitchers flail about at the plate in NL ballparks. Sure, it may have been the latest example of baseball ruining itself (that's according to purists who figure that something is always ruining the game), but for younger fans (like myself, for instance), it injected a bit more intrigue and fun into what's admittedly a long and arduous regular season. If you're going to play 162 games a year, at least make 10 percent of them markedly different from the other 90 percent.


In the inaugural season of interleague play in 1997, greats Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds faced off in a series between the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants. MONICA M. DAVEY/Getty Images

Even though you could argue that it lessened the significance of league pride when it came to the All-Star Game and the World Series, you could also argue that these games could have intensified league pride as well. Interleague play came in before the All-Star Game was used to determine home-field advantage in the World Series, and while the players still took pride in winning the All-Star Game, you have to imagine that winning an actual regular-season game against those "fiends" from the other league would probably take precedent. Plus, if you couldn't get them in October, then taking down a big, bad team from across the aisle in order to pad your "W" column still felt good.

However, as the years passed by and realignment brought along the aforementioned changes, something peculiar yet predictable happened. Interleague games ceased being a special attraction on the sports calendar. "SportsCenter" no longer posted a recap of where the two leagues stood after each round of interleague play. Fans started to realize that for every tasty matchup like Royals-Cardinals or Angels-Dodgers, we'd get the randomness of Rockies-Orioles or Rays-Brewers. Depending on how those random teams were doing, that could be a good matchup, but from a year-to-year basis it's not something that moves the needle anymore.

As a result, the once-exciting and intriguing advent of interleague play has become something that's just  a part of the regular rotation of a baseball season. That's not to say it's a bad thing — after all, baseball brought this in on a trial basis, and now we're here 20 years later still talking about it as part of MLB's schedule. Clearly it's been a success and will continue to be part of baseball going forward. The question now is what (if anything) should be done to rekindle a bit of the intrigue and allure that interleague play once had in the minds of both fans and teams alike.

Until another round of expansion hits baseball, year-round interleague play is here to stay. That means that the idea of bringing back the periodical schedule — with a greater focus on geographic/historical rivalries, in my opinion — won't happen until baseball is in a situation with a number of its teams to where they can do it again. Also, the idea of an October-based incentive to spice up interleague play went by the wayside when baseball came to its senses and decided that the World Series team with the best record gets home-field advantage was the best way to solve that problem, instead of using the All-Star Game to decide it.


Interleague matchups pitting stars like Manny Machado of the Baltimore Orioles and Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates now take place regularly with 15 teams in each league. Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

That meant that Jerry Reinsdorf's idea of giving home-field advantage in the World Series to the league that had the most wins in interleague play ended up going by the wayside. Was it an unconventional idea? Of course it was, but at the same time, it was better than the current plan and also better than simply alternating from year to year. Plus, it would have definitely added more incentive and a bit more excitement to those interleague games with the idea that it could count toward something big in the Fall Classic.

Meanwhile, there's also the idea of shaking things up completely and letting the home team play by the visitor's rules during interleague games. Yeah, I'm talking about giving AL fans the opportunity to watch their pitchers hit in their home ballparks, and I'm also talking about denigrating the sacred confines of NL ballparks by bringing the designated hitter there. You can imagine that baseball may have considered this idea behind closed doors, but you also have to imagine that fans of both leagues would probably be driven to the depths of insanity if they had to watch the aforementioned scenarios play out.

Basically, there's no real easy answer to the path that interleague play is taking in MLB — other than the fact it appears to be a straight line into stagnancy. It's clear that while it's obviously a success and has helped the game evolve, interleague play at this point in time is nothing more than an temporary change in ballpark scenery and lineup construction. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing for a sport that is evolving but still revels in the redundancy of the nature of the game.

It is proof that everything gets old if it hangs around for two decades. Interleague play isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but it does need a bit of spicing up if it wants to return to the excitement that it once had. It's only a matter of finding the right spice to give interleague play the flavor that made it the taste of sports for a while.

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