PADRES UPDATE : NOTEBOOK / SCOTT MILLER : McIlvaine, Werner Both Favor National League Realignment

If General Manager Joe McIlvaine has anything to say about it, the Padres will be playing in the same division as the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals next season.

In the NL West.

Major league owners are convening in New York this week, and one of the topics they will discuss is realignment. With Florida and Colorado joining the league as expansion teams next summer, many want to send the Cubs, Cardinals and Colorado to the NL West and ship Atlanta, Cincinnati and Florida to the East.

“I wish they’d do it,” McIlvaine said. “It makes all the sense in the world, geographically. Then the East is all playing in the Eastern time zone.”

McIlvaine said he and majority Padre owner Tom Werner have discussed it and that Werner also favors realignment.

“His opinion and mine are different on some issues, but on this one we each feel like realignment is necessary,” McIlvaine said.

The biggest obstacle to realignment is the Cubs, who oppose it because they are afraid that more West Coast games will hurt their television ratings on superstation WGN.

“They’re just using financial considerations as a reason not to do it,” McIlvaine said. “To me, that’s not in the best interest of baseball. The commissioner (Fay Vincent) is supposed to look at the big picture. It’s the commissioner’s job to do what is in the best interest of baseball.

“We’ll see if he gets involved or not.”

One way of possibly appeasing the Cubs is with scheduling. While NL teams have been talking about an unbalanced format in which teams would play 20 games against each club in their division and only six against those outside their division, other possibilities would be an 18-8 or 13-12 format.

McIlvaine likes the 13-12 format currently employed by the AL.

“I like playing each team twice (at home and on the road), like now,” McIlvaine said. “I would hate to see a situation where there are 28 teams in baseball and all you seem to play is six of them.”

The 13-12 format, many think, would please the Cubs because it would cut down the number of their West Coast gams.

Still, with the Cubs being against realignment mostly for reasons relating to television, it will be interesting to see what Vincent does this week.

“If ever here was a case for ‘Is TV controlling baseball?’, that’s it right there,” McIlvaine said. “That’s exhibit A.”

Padre Manager Greg Riddoch returned on Sunday after spending two days in Greeley, Colo., for his son Raliegh’s high school graduation.

“It was good,” Riddoch said. “The weather was nice, the graduation was beautiful. It was a killer watching him walk across that thing. He’s the last one.”

Riddoch’s other son, Rory, is 21.