I've made no bones about my hatred of Interleague play since this dumb idea came to fruition under Bud Selig a decade ago. To erase a hundred years of tradition so some fans in Long Island can get their jollies watching the Yankees play at Shea 3 times a year is hardly a viable excuse to tarnish both the All Star game and World Series and now, cause undue injury to the Yankees ace. For those who don't know top Yankee starter Chin Wang was injured during a thirteen nil blowout of Houston while running the bases (running the bases for Chrissakes!) for no other reason that it was an interleague game played in an NL park under NL rules.

As one of the few remaining baseball traditionalists I know I'm in the minority on this but can we at least have a DH during these meaningless interleague exhibition games?

hahahahahahahahahaha

Why play interleague when the Twins and Royals could play another series against each other!

Who needs sold out stadiums when we could have 9,000 watching that A's-Rangers game?

Why would anybody be interested in a Red Sox-Phillies series?

Why should pitchers have to run 90 feet, maybe more???

Why should a 1st basemen have to run the bases if a pitcher doesn't have to? Catchers have to squat all game, maybe they shouldn't have to run either. Actually, let's just use ghost runners and get rid of this problem all together!!!

EGYLM,

Wang could have been injured in the bath tub. I think it is a stretch to blame interleague. And calling Wang an ace is an even bigger stretch.

Anyway, it will be no fun for the Yanks to go at it without their best pitcher. I doubt they'll be like the Cards who have done pretty well despite missing two of the top tem pitchers in the game.

If you were a real traditionalist, you'd be in favor of banning the DH.


But yes, I agree. IL play is fuggin' stupid. So is the unbalanced schedule.

Yes! Totally. Get rid of the DH, interleague play, any and all replay nonsense. Hell, get rid of video scoreboards and night games.

IMO, people make WAY too much out of the "differences" between the AL and NL. It's all baseball. It's not like the bases are only 82' apart in one league.

I am a big fan of interleague play. Why should fans in Pittsburgh not be able to have a chance to see ARod or Manny Ramirez play one weekend? We should prevent them from this opportunity because it's dangerous for an AL pitcher to run the bases? No way.

Of course there will be some dud games. Kansas City vs. Washington doesn't get anybody excited. But at least you're seeing a different team. Is it worth getting rid of the KC-WSH game so that the Nationals can play one more series against the Rockies?

Attendance is up and the fans like it- at least that's what the numbers say. Occasionally you get a potential World Series preview like Bos-Philly. You get cities excited in Chicago and NY and LA when their teams square off. I'm failing to see the problem. In an NL park, the AL pitchers hit. In and AL park, the NL team likely has a .250 hitter as the DH. There are advantages and disadvantages for both, and all pretty much even out for 32 teams over 162 games.

Can we end the idiocy of the DH first?!!

As opposed to those barnburner interleague games like the battle for Florida that set all the Sunshine state's baseball fans (all five of them) hearts a flutter. Nothing like St Petersburgh against Miami for exciting baseball tradition.


It has just been soooooooo much fun watching the AL pound the crap out of the NL year after year, after year...um after year, af...well you get the picture. As if this tradition over the last decade wasn't just resigned to the All Star game and World Series serious baseball fans have to put up with these glorified exhibition games every year around this time. No, I really couldn't give a rat's ass about Philly against Boston and I doubt very much the players do. As a Yankee fan I would much rather see more games against TRADITIONAL RIVALS like Cleveland and Detroit than have to suffer through watching them pummel a AAA type NL team like San Diego or Houston.

I detest the DH. But if you're going to put on these stupid exhibition games than at least use the rule.

Happy to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks IL play is a joke.

How is it any different if Wang got hurt in the WS running the bases during game 1? The DH rule should stay, and can someone tell me, what was the score when Wang got hurt? If it was 7 or 8 runs why was he still in the game hitting>? Is it the interleague games fault that the Yankees have no faith in their bullpen to let them finish it off so the pitcher doesn't get hurt? And if the score was closer at that point disregard the last statement

The AL's dominance you speak of has translated into a 51.3% win percentage (1387 wins 1317 losses) since 1997.

The only year that was a real blowout was 2006, when the AL went 154-98. The NL's St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series that year.

Your Yankees could play more games against the Tigers and Indians if they didn't play Toronto and Tampa 18 times each.

This is actually a great season for a Rays-Marlins matchup. Two young, exciting teams.

In 2007, the AL beat the NL 137-115. The NL had a higher BA (.281 to .268) more HRs (271 to 267) but the AL had the lower ERA (4.38 to 4.70) Read into that whatever you like.

The average attendance for interleague games since 1997 is 33,071...Including an alltime high in 2007 of 34,905 avg. attendance.

It's good for the fans. They see different players and different teams and different styles. They count in the standings, so I guarantee you are the only one who considers them exhibition games.

"Traditionalists" are so funny. It doesn't matter if something is "better," it's automatically "worse" because it's different. I suppose you probably want to keep the grain mills standing on the waterfront in Buffalo because they are the city's link to their prosperous times 120 years ago.

You just answered your own question...it's the World Series and not some forced exhibition game against a crummy Houston team. As for taking Wang out it was only the sixth inning for goodness sakes. But maybe you're right, the Yankees (or any AL team for that matter) could probably take out any NL team using their AA squads. This is how ridiculous interleague play has gotten, I'm thumbing through the News sports page and notice the AL went 12-2 in IL play yesterday, and that isn't even a rarity.

Thanks Bud Selig for foisting this pathetic brand of baseball on us.

Reading your posts i actually wonder if you follow the same MLB than i do...
But well it's not the first time i have the impression Yanks fans are living on a different planet...

The Game was in a NL stadium!!! No DH rule there!!

Damned Yankees arrogance that wants "its" rule to be applied in the other league's ballpark!

what was the score? and it wasn't an exhibition game... IT COUNTS!!
boo hoo yankee player got hurt
get over it

I think we should end the idiocy that Wang is an "Ace." Being the #1 starter doesnt mean you're an ace.

Most wins in MLB since 2005 (more than Santana, Sabathia, Beckett, Webb, Halladay, et al) would seem to qualify him. 19 wins each of the last two years and an ERA below 3.75 would seem to qualify him. 5-0 in seven road starts for a .500 team this year would seem to qualify him.

I'm not sure what you're looking for...Other than not having 5+ years of sustained success, I'd say Wang has figured out how to pitch in the majors. He would be an ACE as I define it.

You can cite the Yanks lineup and Wang's run support, but his low ERA seems to make that argument irrelevant. It's not like he's going 19-7 with a 5.60 ERA.

I was always under the impression that each team had an "Ace" on their staff, no matter how bad of a team they are and you are absolutely correct by saying that Wang is the Yankee Ace. Funny thing about Wang though is his record away from Yankee stadium has been stellar while his home record is decidedly mediocre.

No matter, he's still the Ace of the Yankee staff.....or was before the Houston series anyways.

Toronto and Tampa are in the Yankees division. It's the same logic as the Bills having to play the Dolphins twice a year...nothing you can do about it but just accept it.

Nobody wants to know about your injured Wang.

I fail to see how playing some teams in the MLB, that is, the same league that the yankees are in, qualifies as "exhibition garbage." If teams from the NL and AL can play each other in the world series, they can play each other in the regular season. It gives the fans chances to see some new faces and creates some interesting matchups. If Wang got hurt playing some AAA team, you might have a valid argument. But between 2 major league teams, you dont. What happens when wang ends on an NL team? should he not have to run because he's used to being an AL pitcher?

As for wang getting hurt running the bases, last time i checked, running the bases was part of the game, no matter who you are. If you are a major leaguer, you should be able run 360 feet occasionally, and not look like an invalid while doing so, like wang did. Pitchers are ball players like everyone else, and should be required to bat and run the bases liek everyone else. I also suppose that we also should just record any ball up the middle as an automatic out, because we dont want to force the fragile little pitchers to actually have to move off the mound to field the ball.

You're not a "traditionalist," you are just oen of these people that automatically thinks new = bad.

Hahahahaha Outstanding!!!!!

Hank, is that you?

Bingo. Somehow I've seen CC find a way to lumber around the bases without hurting himself. (Knocking furiously on wood.) How come he can do it but Wang can't?

I like making pitchers bat because they are less likely to be a jackass on the mound. Any candy ass can buzz a high high and inside, or drill him in the AL. But in the NL, the pitcher needs to have the nuts to face the music the next time he steps up to the plate. Its all about accountability.

See: Clemens, Roger. That jackass wouldn't have pulled that crap (throwing the broken bat at Piazza) if he had to step up the plate later that game. (Assuming Shawn Estes wasn't pitching, that is.)

Forget getting beaned...What if they actually make contact and have to leg out a grounder??? DANGER!!!!

Are you kidding? Well i guess for a Yankee fan, if they fail to make it/win a world series there is the built in excuse, that Wang got hurt and wasn't the same pitcher after his injury, blah blah blah...... The way you speak about his injury it was strictly because they were playing Houston, but really it could have been anywhere anytime. On another note, it could have been any pitcher on any one of our favorite teams, but because it's the Yankees we should all feel sorry and sad......

totally ridiculous

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall Pedro Martinez being as ballsy with his beanings and inside pitches since switching to the NL.

Wang is an ace & he is a good ace make no mistake about it. With that being said, you really sound like your typical arrogant whiney yankee fan. Why do all yankee fans think that the whole Major League World should revolve around the Yankees. Hank Steinbrenner with his idiotic comments the other night about putting in the dh for both leagues just made himself look like the spoiled little kid that did not get what he wanted on Christmas morning.

Since we somehow got two threads going on this, I thought I'd add my reply to this one as well:

No, actually quite moronic...but given what little knowledge you have of baseball, expected

Thank you for an intelligent question, seemingly a rarity on this MLB board, so I'll answer; I'm a Yankee fan but that has nothing to do with the Wanger stubbing his toe, but rather the whole idea of Interleague play. If some pitcher from the O's had an injury brought on by the EVIL known as interleague play I'd be just as disturbed by this Seligesque poison.

But hey...Major League Baseball began in 69 for the lot of you.

come on, now you have to resort to throwing insults? Wow typical Yankee fan

I really doubt you would be as disturbed if a player from the O's or the Sox or the Tribe or anyone else got hurt, just admit, you are bent out of shape because it was a Yankee.

In the world of "Bishop" the first place Diamonbacks must be lunatics ... yesterday they asked one of their starting pitchers, M Owings, to pinch hit for them !!

Oh the horror!!!!! they should lose their franchise for doing something so ridiculous

Once again dude, doing something because "that's the way we used to do it" is not valid reasoning. Sure, a remembrance of the old days is never a bad thing. But like the rest of the world, sports evolve.

In my opinion, there have been a lot of positives that have come out of interleague play that make the "I liked it better the other way" argument sound rediculous. It's still the SAME SPORT. There's only ONE COMMISSIONER. The bases are 90' apart and the mound is 60'-6" from the plate. They hold one draft and teams select the from the same pool of players. Each franchise's minor league affiliate plays under both the AL and NL rules, according to the home team's affiliation, so all of the players come up through the system playing both ways. If the leagues were vastly different, it might be a different issue.

But maybe you're right, we should've stopped sports evolution in the 1960's. Perhaps the NBA shouldn't allow dunking. Maybe the AFC (AFL) and NFC (NFL) should only meet in the Super Bowl. Perhaps the NHL should contract its league down to the original 6. While we're at it, we can segregate our schools too! That's the way we did it back in my day!

I don't understand why the anti-interleague group gets their panties in a knot about the 18 games per year that "ruin the sanctity of the game." You still have 144 other games to love. What's not to enjoy about the 1st place White Sox playing the 1st place Cubs this weekend in Chicago???

And once again unlike the NFL, NBA baseball has a tradition that worked fine for oh say almost 100 YEARS. Evolution is one thing like the evolution of equipment, the evolution of the baseball player as athlete in terms of training, the evolution of the player as free agent, the evolution of the game in regard to expansion (maybe...a necassary evil) but baseball isn't like "other sports". For the game to radically alter its format so the fly by night fan (seem to be plenty of them here) can get his/her kicks watching the Rockies play the White Sox is ignoring tradition for the almighty dollar....though now that the novelty of IL has worn off that's debatable. While I realise IL is unfortunately here to stay it doesn't make the game any better. Like KD in CT I think interleague play is the worst transmutation baseball has gone through outside of the DH, artificial turf and the Houston Astros uniforms of the late 70's and eighties.

Your "one commisioner" idea sounds so naive it is almost cute. Actually there's 30 commissioners and one head Stooge....the Budmeister, the worst face to hit this game since Bowie Kuhn.

Why? Because it makes half the teams of the MLB, aka the AL ones, actually play the real game of baseball, 9 vs 9, pitchers at the bat, 9 games a year?

Btw Ralph it's been fun debating this with you. Your knowledge is there and your arguments have a certain amount of validity but you constantly make the same mistake many other non-purists make and that is your comparison of baseball to other sports.

I'm not debating the DH. That would be a different thread. I actually enjoy the NL (traditional) version as the game doesn't seem to drag as much as the AL version. I'm debating the wisdom of tinkering with something that was fine from 1901 to 1996. Methinks perchance that the reason the baseball gods allowed this crap was to absolve themselves from the stain of the 94 non-season. In that regard it is much like George Bush flushing the constitution down the toilet over 9/11. Drastic times drastic measures and all that rot.

So...You are a traditionalist who gets worked up over 18 games out of 162 that are "interleague" even though all of the teams actually compete in the SAME LEAGUE called Major League Baseball and all play for the same championship. You lamented the fact that you'd like to see the Yankees play more against traditional rivals like the Tigers and Indians, instead of NL teams. Then you said:



So this recent phenomenon of the unbalanced schedule, which came about in the last five years, is something "you just accept"? Isn't it possible to only play 12 games against each divisional opponent, rather than 18? Wouldn't that give fans ample opportunities to see other rivals from other divisions more often? Why can't the idea of interleague be "just accepted" in the way you have accepted the more recent idea of the unbalanced schedule?

I love when opponents of interleague cite the Royals-Nationals matchup as an example of what's stupid about interleague (conveniently excluding matchups like Boston-Philly or Cubs-White Sox.) So what's the alternative? The Royals could play more series against the Rangers, and the Nationals could get the Padres three more times a year? At least the FANS OF THE SPORT OF BASEBALL are getting an opportunity to see different players, different uniforms, different styles of play.

I was going to head out then I read this. I'll just comment on this 18 times a year thing you bring up. I'm pretty positive 100 percent of Yankee fans would love to face the Red Sox 18 times a year...shoot they would like to face them 25 times a year which would easily be obtainable if you eliminated the rancid likes of the Pads and 'stros from the mix. Unfortunately you know this is impossible since we can't pick and choose our schedules like college football. One thing we could do to eliminate the unbalanced schedule would be to go bac to the days when the AL and NL weren't forced to stop mid-season for a series of exhibition games.

You are yet to explain what makes Yankees-Rays game a legitimate contest while Yankees-Phillies is an exhibition game.

So, why is ChiSox-Cubs bad for baseball, and pirates-nationals good?

Life has to suck for fans of the Bronx Bombers right now. Third place, 5.0 games out, trailing the lowly Rays, Wang is hurt, Hughes and Kennedy haven't worked out the way they hoped, they had to move Joba to the rotation, and of course, the Red Sox are in first after winning two WS titles in the last three years...

shhhh i can't talk about baseball, he has probably forgotten more about the sport than i will ever hope to learn

Hahahaha that's what I've been asking to all of my pals who are anti-interleague...Their argument seems to stop at, "That's not how it used to be." I'm open to hearing any viable alternatives. And I am failing to see how it's NOT baseball. Playing a game in the LA Coliseum where it was 240ft down the left field line was an exhibition. I guarantee that nobody on an AL team thinks facing Brandon Webb is an exhibition game.

Apparently in A ball, AA ball, and AAA ball, the players are versatile enough to adjust to AL rules or NL rules on a nightly basis. Once they reach the majors, it's apparently too much to ask.