MLB: Has Interleague Play Lost Its Appeal?

There’s an old saying that after a while, anything begins to become normal.

There’s also an old saying that too much of a good thing is good for nothing.  

Perhaps if Bud Selig had ever heard either of these wise old proverbs, interleague play might still be a novelty in Major League Baseball.

2012 will mark the 15th year in which interleague play has been part of the MLB schedule.

13, 14 and 15 years ago, it was exciting to see rivals face off against one another.  Now, watching the Mets and Yankees or the Cubs and White Sox play one another has become, well, normal.

The Mets and Yankees have faced off against each other a total of 84 times since 1997.  

The Mets will host the Yankees for three games this weekend and then in just two weeks will go across town to Yankee Stadium for another three game series. This has become about as common in New York as a dirty, crowded subway car.

A main reason why NFL football has become must-see TV for most of the country is that each team plays a mere 16 games per season, and games are televised just once per week.  

It’s fresh, it’s exciting and anyone’s interest can be captured for three hours every Sunday.

Baseball already has a problem in that its season contains 162 games plus the postseason which stretches out over seven months. Add in Spring Training and you’ve got almost nine months of baseball every year.  It’s long, it’s grueling and the average sports fan is not going to tune in every single night for three hours to watch their favorite team.

The one exciting aspect of MLB’s regular season used to be interleague play, but that too has now become a case of too much of a good thing.  

Mets vs. Yankees, Cubs vs. White Sox, Giants vs. A’s. It’s all become commonplace. It’s been happening six times per year for the past 15 years.

If you miss this weekend’s Mets vs. Yankees series because your in-laws are in town, no reason to get discouraged or hold a three month grudge against your wife. They’ll be playing each other again in 14 days.  

And if you miss that series as well, there’s still no need to worry. They’ll be playing each other six times next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.

With interleague play, MLB has been creating a perfect business case on how to deplete a product through overexposure.

Too much of anything is good for nothing, and what used to be the highlight of the MLB regular season has now become just six more games in a 162 game season.