Red Sox vs. Braves Is A Geographic Rivalry?

Interleague play starts next weekend, and it’s probably safe to say that the NL West and Central will probably get their butts beat this year, while three or four of the NL East teams actually have the chance to come out pretty well and not made to look completely foolish by loaded AL line-ups. The problem with interleague every year is the uneven balance regarding which teams play each other, and it’s not exactly making Braves 3rd baseman Chipper Jones happy, particularly because the 1st place Braves will have to take on the Red Sox as a home-and-home. The Mets have to do the same thing with the Yankees, but the Phillies get a chance to beat up on the Blue Jays and Royals.

“Is it fun? Yeah. It’s fun playing in new cities. It’s fun playing in front of new crowds, it’s fun playing new teams,” Jones said. “What’s not fun is when they’re all contenders and your competition doesn’t have to play the same competition you do.”

What Jones most dislikes is the recently added wrinkle that requires teams to play so-called regional rivals in home-and-home series each season, such as Braves-Red Sox, Yankees-Mets and Angels-Dodgers.

“It’s a factor (in the pennant race),” Jones said. “We play Boston six times, and they’ve got the best record in the American League. We play the top three teams in the toughest division in baseball (the AL Central). We, without a doubt, have the toughest schedule in baseball, bar none. You don’t play in our division and play the interleague schedule we play and not say we don’t have the toughest schedule.”

The problem is the whole “geographic rivalry” concept, which is a handy-dandy way to sell tickets with teams in close markets: Angels-Dodgers, Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox, Giants-Athletics, and so on. Atlanta gets linked up with the Red Sox due more to history, if Wikipedia’s any guess — the Braves originally being Boston’s NL team, but that still doesn’t mean it’s fair. Jones has a point, but it’s not gonna work running up against obvious commerce — the whole reason interleague works is because fans of those two-team markets can have superiority contests each year. Yankees-Mets? Cubs-White Sox? Dodgers-Angels? Look forward to those just about every year, and so do their fans and some of those in other obvious rivalries.

Fair only applies when it doesn’t affect the bottom line, Mr. Jones. No matter what the interleague schedule, given the state of the NL as compared to the AL in recent years, all of the NL teams should just be prepared to take their beatings and like it, unless you happen to be in the NL East — you have half a chance.  The amusing part is that when interleague started, I thought the NL would get the best of it; they were so used to playing with pitchers hitting that adding another bat off the bench would help them, and AL teams would have to put their DHs in the field (more often than not, at 1B or in the outfield) — but that really has not been the case the last couple of years.

Chipper Jones rips interleague rivalry games [MSNBC]
Interleague play [Wikipedia]
Peek at the Week: Interleague Begins [MLB.com]