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Sports
Sports Monday
14Jun
Interleague Play: A Failed Experiment
06.14.2004 From the New York Sun
| When
interleague play was introduced in 1997, I thought it was easily the
most damaging change to happen to the game in the postwar era, worse
than the wild card, the designated hitter, and domed stadiums combined.
I thought it would badly damage the prestige of the All-Star Game and,
more importantly, the World Series. I could barely even watch the
games. Now that interleague play is in its eighth year, I think less of it than I ever have. On a normal day, I watch part or all of five games on TV; over the next three days, aside from the occasional grudging glance at the Mets’ adventures against Cleveland and the Yankees’ against Arizona, I will be watching only three games, all of them being played between the Cubs and the Astros. The worst thing about this year’s round of interleague play isn’t that it lines up such an insanely irrelevant matchup as Baltimore at Los Angeles, but that this is actually promoted as a marquee series. It’s insulting. A shill writing on the official MLB Web site writes, “The overriding theme of this year’s interleague schedule is a mindboggling, nostalgia-packed 16 rematches of World Series past.” Yes, it is indeed mind-boggling that MLB would think anyone wants to see a rematch settling the heated Orioles-Dodgers grudge that doesn’t involve youth serums, Frank Robinson, and Sandy Koufax. There are of course better and more glamorous series on the schedule. It’s hard to deny the appeal of the upcoming Yankees-Dodgers and Athletics-Cubs sets. But for every series of that caliber there are five like Devil Rays-Diamondbacks, Blue Jays-Padres, or Expos-Mariners, which are not only unappealing in their own right but diminish the credibility of better and more intriguing series by making interleague games a matter of easy, thoughtless routine. It would make some sense to try to preserve the best of interleague play by retaining certain key rivalries and promoting a limited amount of dream series. Unfortunately, this will not happen, primarily for scheduling reasons and because such a system would create an explicit hierarchy among teams in the marketing of the game. Futhermore, shortsighted owners and the commissioner have all bought into their own propaganda about the large attendance increases brought about by interleague play. Interleague games have boosted ticket sales by 11.4% over intraleague games in the last seven years. That sounds impressive,but it works out to only about 4,000 seats a game, a figure artificially inflated by the marquee rivalries like Mets-Yankees and Cubs-White Sox. For those 4,000 seats a game the owners have indeed, as I feared they would, forfeited much of the mystique of the All-Star Game and the World Series, with predictable results. In 1996 the World Series had a 17.4 television rating. It has been falling ever since, with ratings hitting an all-time low of 11.9 two years ago before bouncing back to 13.9 last year. Similar, the midsummer classic earned a 13.2 rating in 1996, which dropped to an 11.8 in the first year of interleague play and to a 9.5 the last two years. In other words, the total audience in the All-Star Game was down by — get this! — 11.4% from 1997 to 2003.The World Series audience was down 7%. Correlation, of course, does not prove causation; the dominance of the nationally hated Yankees is cited (implausibly, I think) as a reason for the decline in World Series ratings. As for the All-Star Game, we’re supposed to believe that the masses were tuning it out because home-field advantage in the World Series wasn’t at stake. And it’s true that for individual baseball owners, interleague play pays — 33,000 extra people through the turnstiles per team adds up to a lot of money. For that money, though, the owners are sacrificing the long-term interest of the game.The World Series and the All-Star Game, in large part because they were the only place one could see competition between the leagues, were traditionally watched even by casual fans. They had a unique aura derived from the power of anticipation, an aura that is badly diminished when the MLB Web site invites us, shamelessly, to “imagine Mariano Rivera against Luis Gonzalez in Arizona” and then tells us to tune in to see it after the Kansas City-Atlanta game is done. As showcases for the best players and teams, the World Series and All-Star Game are the kind of events that can hook a child on the game for life, or take a casual fan and make him or her a hardcore one, in a way even a premier interleague series can’t match. The greatness of the 1996 and 1997 World Series reawakened my passion for baseball after a period of casual indifference caused by the 1994 strike, expanded leagues, and the wild card. Other fans can also become impassioned, but only if they watch October baseball. From what I can tell, the longer the failed experiment of interleague play goes on, the less of them will. | ||
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Reader Comments (3)
the big problem with the argument I have, however, is that bad interleague matchups are no less interesting than bad intraleague matchups, and those are constant. when your team is lame and plays another lame team, there's nothing sadder in the world. but the royals will play the devil rays several more times to come this year.
the all-star game is just lame, and little to nothing will stop the ratings from falling, though it will remain the most-watched all-star game of all four leagues. your data on the world series is nonsensical, because 2002's wasn't well received outside of the west, and I'm not sure 2003's was watched even by Yankee fans until the realization was made of what could happen: everyone expected it to be anticlimactic after the ALCS, and in spite of the surprise result, it kinda was.
the bases are logo-free and the crowds are decent. cross-league play means nothing in any of the other big 4. when it is wholly meaningless and unnoted in MLB, it'll be time to get rid of it.
I find regional rivalries, the key to so much baseball interest, greatly intensified by Cubbies-Sox, Gint-A's, Anger-Dodgel games, not to mention retrieving Mets-Yankees contests from the sub-Grapefruit purgatory of the Mayor's Trophy Game.
Interleague play brings more stars to more parks, which is a great boon to the fans. I'm still irrationally proud to say I saw Mays, Gibson, Clemente play at Shea -- now more will be able to say that about Bonds or A Rod or whomever.
The separation into leagues is a bizarre atavism anyway. Why should a rookie pitcher have a first-timer's advantage in a Series game? I'd rather see that very first encounter between Big Slugger and Young Phenom during the regular season, in a game that counts, but not for all the marbles.
I still hate the DH, but as long as home-stadium rules rule, interleague play also prevents the Series from being the sole time that bizarre culture clash has to occur. How outrageous for a pitcher to have his first at bat in years in Game 3 of a World Series!
As for declining viewership, I'd place plenty of blame on the broadcasts themselves. The Gargiola-Kubek NBC games of my youth were models of expertise and comfort. They told you who was going to a hit a homer, and why, moments before it happened, and also explained the infield fly rule so my mom, who never played the game, could understand it. Nowadays, youth-oriented, hard-hitting, and filled with attitude, most national baseball events aim squarely for the man with a brew in his fist, rather than all of America settling in to watch the national pastime.