In Defense of Interleague

Every year it seems that interleague play comes about just as the season starts settling into a comfortable rhythm, forcing fans to reevaluate their teams as new competition comes to town. Not coincidentally, the schedulers place the first round of interleague games at a crucial point in the season where a fluky hot streak starts to go cold, making the games seem even more important. Nonetheless, more and more pundits seem to favor doing away with the fan favorite every year, arguing that the important and exciting games for which fans turn out in droves should not even occur. These happen to be the same people who think that Red Sox/Yankees games should not lead off Sportscenter in some perverted form of baseball affirmative action that completely misses the point. Oddly enough, ten years after MLB launched interleague play and the NBA launched the WNBA, the endeavor with fan support and financial success also happens to be the only one that might cease to be.

Fundamentally, my support of interleague play comes down to one argument: it is good for the popularity of the game. New Nationals president Stan Kasten has made a point of talking about how baseball teams have to market themselves to casual fans as well as die-hards, meaning putting a good team on the field is important, but putting a good product on the field goes a step further. One important aspect that makes interleague play appealing is that the games are remarkably competitive. Coming into this season’s interleague games, the NL held an extremely narrow 1104-1096 advantage over the AL in total interleague wins. That makes for a .502 winning percentage, a virtual split between a wide variety of teams. More directly, fans respond to the incentive of seeing different opponents. To continue with the Nationals example, the team drew over 30,000 fans for their series opener with the Orioles, 67% of RFK’s capacity. Their most recent home stand drew and average of less than 25,000 per game, including 21,000 to the most comparable game on Friday night. The increase in attendance has been well documented, and it makes sense that casual fans would respond to the marketing tool of a regional rivalry, however contrived it may be to the fanatical fans who do things like, say, read baseball blogs in their free time. Kasten is right: any extra marketing that makes the team more appealing to casual fans eventually helps improve the revenue stream, which opens up financial possibilities that can make the team more competitive. For all the talk of how the Twins and A’s exemplify the lower-budget models for success in opposition to the Yankees and Red Sox, not even Bud Selig would argue that greater financial parity through the free market would be bad for baseball. Interleague play is an avenue toward that type of financial equity, marketing different opponents as exotic and bringing more people to the game.

It may be instructive to think of Interleague play as a necessary development in the course of baseball history. Just like globalization has led to natural changes in the economy and the way in which business interact with one another, baseball has changed dramatically over the last half century. There is an old fable that the 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates had seen little of the Yankees before that year’s World Series even though they were an accomplished group of players with 94 regular season wins under their belts. The story goes that some of the Pirates offensive leaders, including Lloyd Waner and Pie Traynor watched the Bombers take batting practice before game one and were so impressed by the power of Ruth, Gehrig, et al (the top three Yankee sluggers out homered the top three Buccos 125-25 that season) that they packed it in and got swept 4-0. Whether or not that story has any truth, it illustrates how different the game was 75 years ago. Free agency started to demystify the AL-NL split, cable TV continued the trend, and now we have Baseball Tonight, MLB.tv, entirely too much radio coverage, hundreds of websites on every team, and video games imitating individual players’ skills. The division between the two leagues is illusory by now, so what is the point of pretending they cannot play one another? The cat is out of the bag.

Plus, there are funny happenings every year during interleague that I would not want to miss. Career-long AL pitchers trying to bunt is one good one, and so is the annual sojourn of all-bat, no-glove DHs like David Ortiz and Travis Hafner to the grassy part of the baseball stadium. Commentators always spend entirely too much time talking about the strategic differences between the leagues, which seems like a joke until we all realize that half of the AL managers are really too dumb to execute a successful double switch- couldn’t MLB put on a yearly weekend seminar during spring training where they teach the managers basic strategy so they do not fall into these traps of embarrassment? Altogether, they’re good times.

I could understand why some people would oppose interleague play if it meant tougher conditions on the players, meaningful bastardization of the World Series, lost revenue for teams, or a worse product for fans, but none of these situations exists. In fact, interleague games are demonstrably more competitive and they increase teams’ revenue, making the continuation of the new tradition a no-brainer.

By the way, I wrote this piece 35 minutes before my college graduation, and I see that as a positive reflection of proper prioritization. Analysis comes before pomp.