Why Major League Baseball Should Do Away with Interleague Play

Although initially intrigued with seeing teams from the senior circuit play my Detroit Tigers—teams I wouldn’t normally see in Detroit—I was never a fan of interleague play. It seemed to me a gimmick in the aftermath of the 1994-95 strike to get fans to come to the park. 

It also came at the expense of a balanced schedule. This year, for example, the Tigers open their season for three games against the Yankees; the Yankees will come to Detroit for four games in early May and ne’er do the two teams meet again. While teams in the same division must play each other 18 times. 

MLB would have us believe this develops rivalries within the division; but I tire of seeing Detroit meet Cleveland 12 times over a two-month period. 

And what of the old rivalries?

Detroit and New York are two of the oldest and most storied franchises in baseball—Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle, and Kaline, Greenberg and Cobb—and I find it amoral that they now meet only six or seven times over the course of a season. 

Even the players dislike interleague play. Says Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox, “I say just stick to the rivalry games and eliminate all the useless interleague games. People don’t care about Washington against Toronto. They do care about Washington against Baltimore. So keep them and dump the rest.” 

It’s true, in the 1960s, when I grew up, in the days before cable TV, I almost never saw a National League team play on TV, until the postseason. Today, however, I can see a National League team play any night of the week, so there is no novelty in interleague play. 

So MLB, if you read this, please do away with interleague play and bring back the balanced schedule. I'd much rather boo the Yankees 12 times a year than see the Tigers battle the Rockies in a game that has no bragging rights.