A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Interleague Play

I still can’t tell if everyone appreciates the monumental thing that happened this week at a convention in a downtown Los Angeles hotel. I am still not sure if baseball fans across America fully realize what happened at the owners’ meetings, or what it means.

Possibly when you heard something about “interleague play,” it meant nothing to you. Just more sports-news mumbo-jumbo.

But here’s what it means:

Some summer night in the next century, you and a friend will go to Dodger Stadium for a baseball game, sit yourselves down, get yourselves two dogs and a double bag of nuts, then sit back and watch nine innings between the Dodgers and the visiting team . . . the New York Yankees.

That same night in Boston, someone is going to catch a cab, buy himself a pretzel the size of a steering wheel, then plop himself on a Fenway bleacher to watch nine innings between the Red Sox and the visiting team . . . the Cincinnati Reds.

That same night in downtown Detroit, a friend of mine is going to park her car, put the Club on the steering wheel, sit herself down behind a steel beam and try to watch nine innings between her beloved Tigers and the visiting team . . . the Atlanta Braves.

Scores will flash on the scoreboard:

PHILA 5, CALIF 4

BALT 19, COLO 12

CHI (A) 1, CHI (N) 0

And baseball, finally, gloriously, will become a game of the future, not a game of the past.

It appears a green light has been given at last, affording us a long-awaited chance to see the Giants versus the Angels, the Cardinals versus the Twins, the Indians versus the Mets and all kinds of other happy combinations, beginning as soon as the ’97 season, if baseball’s ownership formally approves what was agreed upon by all those chirping Biltmore orioles who flew into L.A. this week.

Who said owners were dumb?

For some reason--usually invoking the word tradition--bosses of baseball teams have been stubborn as mules when it comes to interleague play, as though it would somehow undermine the World Series. Such foolishness. If we never broke with tradition, we wouldn’t have electric lights.

Imagine a sport that keeps two sets of rules, one for the American League and one for the National, spending six months and 162 games to get to a World Series, then forcing those teams to adapt to the other league’s rules, in the championship series. How preposterous this is, permitting a team to use a designated hitter from April on, then denying it permission just when the team needs him most.

American League pitchers won’t need to go into a World Series trying to remember how to swing a bat from their American Legion days.

And managers from National League teams can get some practice, using a ninth hitter, juggling the lineup, remembering how the rules work about when you can replace the DH and when you can’t. Tom Lasorda won’t have to go from 1988 to 1998 playing by one set of rules, then suddenly using a DH when the ’98 World Series begins.

Sometimes the breaking of tradition is known as progress. Rules that seemed appropriate in 1916 need not apply in 1996. Balk rules change. Scoring rules change. Everything changes. Interleague play should be as natural as sucking on a pumpkin seed.

Those of us who grew up in two-team towns don’t always take into account how exasperating it is for baseball fans who have to watch the same visiting teams, over and over and over.

When I moved from Chicago to Detroit, I remember an acquaintance telling me how much he had enjoyed baseball in the 1960s and ‘70s, except for one thing. He said, “I never once got to go to a ballpark and see Pete Rose and Johnny Bench, or see Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, or see Roberto Clemente, or Willie Mays, or Stan Musial, or Ernie Banks, or Hank Aaron in his prime.

“The closest National League game was in Cincinnati or Chicago, and I don’t have time to drive there to see a baseball game. And I can’t count on TV running a ‘Game of the Week’ with somebody I want to see.”

I never thought of that.

For me, any time I wanted to go see a National League game or an American League game, all I had to do was hop in my car. There was always one close by.

And I never understood why a game between the Yankees and Mets, or Dodgers and Angels, or White Sox and Cubs, would be so awful. What would it spoil--that dream World Series their fans have been waiting for, and waiting for, and waiting for . . . ? Believe me, the World Series between the Giants and Athletics was no better than any other.

Anyway, who cares?

Interleague play is an idea whose time has come . . . around 50 years ago, in fact. It shows you that when baseball’s owners put their heads together, they can come up with something original and necessary.

Next year, let’s talk aluminum bats and how to save our trees.

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INTERLEAGUE APPROVAL

Major league baseball owners unanimously approved interleague play for 1997, but it must still get the backing of the players’ union. C4