McGwire: Interleague Play Won’t Pass a Player Vote

Mark McGwire predicts this will be the final year for interleague play in baseball.

“Players have to vote for it and I don’t think they’re going to do that,” McGwire said. “It’s ruined scheduling. The reason the travel and schedules are so bad is because of interleague play. And I don’t see what purpose is served.”

McGwire, acquired by the St. Louis Cardinals from the Oakland A’s last year, is not happy with other changes he believes has hurt baseball’s popularity.

“Let’s just keep it the way it is,” McGwire said. “There’s too many people out there that want to change the game of baseball. Everything is fine.”

Well, maybe not everything.

“Major league baseball could promote baseball a lot better,” he said “We can give a better image of ballplayers, but it just hasn’t seemed to happen yet.”

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Where is David Justice?

He’s not in left field. He’s not in the lineup. It’s not even April yet, but the Cleveland Indians would like to see his swing heat up in time for the start of the season.

“I’ll start playing Monday,” said Justice, who has yet to step into the batter’s box this spring because of a sore right shoulder and a left knee that’s recovering from off-season surgery.

Justice has never been a fan of spring training. He never lets his body get too far out of shape during the winter. His smooth swing doesn’t get stale in a couple of months.

Nonetheless, Justice with a bat in his hands and a pitcher on the mound will be a reassuring sight for the Indians.

“The shoulder’s fine, it’s just the knee,” Justice said Friday as the rest of the team prepared to play another exhibition game without him. “It’s getting better, but it’s not supposed to be 100% yet. I know I’m going to play with pain this year.”

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Shortly after Hawken Ballard got out of the hospital, his face covered with stitches and the memory of being struck by an overthrown baseball still fresh in his mind, he made a normal request for a 5-year-old kid.

He asked to go to a baseball game.

“Kids are tough,” father Larry Ballard said Saturday as he and Hawken attended the Detroit-Pittsburgh exhibition game at Bradenton, Fla., courtesy of the Pirates. “If it were me, I’d be crawling up a wall.”

The youngster was sitting on his father’s lap in unprotected box seats March 4 when Pirate shortstop Lou Collier’s throw sailed wildly past first baseman Kevin Young and struck him flush on the face.

Worried fans gasped in disbelief as Hawken, who is small for his age, was rushed out of McKechnie Field by an ambulance crew. One emergency medical technician, visibly shaken, told reporters he feared for the boy’s life.

Hawken suffered a fractured skull and required surgery to lift a displaced sinus bone back into place. Still, within hours of being badly injured, Hawken was talking to his family and asking to play Nintendo.

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Philadelphia Phillie catcher Mike Lieberthal was relieved Saturday after learning an MRI taken on his sore right elbow revealed an inflamed joint.

Lieberthal, who hasn’t played since March 10, was told his elbow should heal with two or three days of rest.

Lieberthal, 26, hit .246 with 20 homers and 77 RBIs as a first-year starter in 1997. He signed a two-year, $3.4-million contract in February.

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Marlin President Don Smiley, who has organized a group to buy the financially troubled team from owner Wayne Huizenga, says the deal could be completed by June.

The purchase price would be just over $150 million for Smiley’s group of 10 to 15 investors, he said.