THE sedative the 32-49 Expos administered on Shea Stadium for two days has worn off. And if you believe many of the Mets, the novelty of playing the Yankees has, too.
“It’s just a nuisance,” said Brian McRae. “It will be good to get it over with.”
John Franco agreed. “I think one series is enough,” he said. “I think it takes away from the first one and we have to play the Yankees one more series than the Braves do.”
Of course, if you can do better than .500 for this season series against Montreal, or win more than two out of six against Atlanta, losing a second series to the Yankees becomes a mere speck of dust in a universal season. All the games count, even if tonight’s occupation of 26,045 seats left empty yesterday in perfect weather tells you that the fans, who pay the bills, believe some games mean more.
Orel Hershiser is a 40-year-old conservative who questions the competitive disadvantage built into more inter-league games and, basically, believes the game he loves needs no radical change. But like the 55,775 who will be at Shea Sunday, Orel knows he won’t be pitching against the Expos.
“As a competitor, you look for something to raise the value of the games,” Hershiser said. “And this is a simple shot. The city does that for you.”
Met and Yankee fans wearing blinders this weekend will be showing baseball the bigger picture, screaming that an additional sold-out Yankee-Met series each season is not one too many, but a couple too few. These teams, like all of baseball’s logical geographical rivals, should be in the same division. Interleague play, and all the scheduling problems it has created, should be just the first step to a realigned major leagues that emphasizes divisional play.
This is the way to make it better: Six existing divisions could be realigned to have five teams each playing each other 12 times a year, two series in each park. That’s 48 games. Then, the 10 clubs in the other two divisions of the same league would meet in six games – home-and-home three- game series – for a total of 60 contests.
That leaves 45 games to play the 15 teams from the other league three times each, every other year at home. The total of 153 games is plenty for a legitimate season, but if the owners don’t want to give up nine games of revenue, one to three inter-league series could be either rotated or offered on a permanent basis against specific rivals as an inducement to the franchises reluctant to switch.
The playoff system would remain the same, while the divisions establish obvious geographical rivalries and build new ones just as strong as any that would be casualties of such a radical plan.
It is not necessary to maintain separate National and American League presences in New York if every team gets exposure here. They still can, minus the feudalism of two leagues playing different rules.
Here is the best possible American League:
East – Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Expos, Blue Jays.
Central- Cubs, White Sox, Cards, Royals, Brewers.
West – Diamondbacks, Mariners, Rockies, Astros, Rangers.
And the most fan-friendly National League:
East -Braves, Marlins, Devil Rays, Orioles, Phillies.
Central – Indians, Reds, Pirates, Twins, Tigers.
West – Giants, A’s, Dodgers, Angels, Padres.
If the Expos move to northern Virginia, they would switch to the NL East to be with the Orioles and Phillies, while, even better, the Braves move in with the Mets and Yankees.
Obviously, there’s not much in this for the Twins and Mariners, but without current natural geographical rivals, they have little to lose. Besides, what is so great about a current schedule that has two teams competing for a division title playing one series, maximum, in September?
The wild card takes the juice out of two divisional races each year, but that still leaves four to be strengthened with an unbalanced schedule that is more fair and compelling than the hodgepodge existing now.
The critics of inter-league play argue the thrill is gone when the Yankees play the Marlins, as if we are all deprived of seeing the Twins, Devil Rays or Royals one less series a year. They also have kept a 38-year-long fruitless vigil for a Yankee-Met World Series, arguing how special it will be if there was no preceding regular-season contact. Yeah. As if any Islander-Ranger playoff series ever suffered from the fact that the teams played repeatedly during regular seasons.
The fans are telling baseball what they want: More games that matter to them. And owners better realize there is not a lot worth saving about what they have now.
Keeping tradition would mean more if baseball still had two eight-team leagues, but 20 of the major league’s 30 have been created or moved over the last four decades. So what is being honored by keeping a schedule that has become unwieldy, unfair and not nearly as exciting as it could be?