Columnist Dean Juipe: Realignment is inevitable, so embrace it

Dean Juipe

Friday, Aug. 1, 1997 | 10:48 a.m.

THE HORSE is out of the barn.

Set free when baseball broke from its 96-year tradition and introduced partial interleague play this season, the sport is moving toward irrevocable change. Realignment is now inevitable.

An idea that once drew guffaws from cynics and stinging complaints from alleged purists suddenly sounds appropriate.

Roll over Beethoven. Even baseball's many dinosaurian followers may come to embrace this latest evolutionary concept, one that suggests teams should be bracketed by geography and not by happenstance.

Now that the barrier between the American and National leagues has begun to crumble with interleague play, the next step is to haul it down like a poor man's Berlin Wall.

A sport immersed in tradition and built on the sanctity of two separate but equal leagues is tearing through a long-standing impasse. Perhaps as early as next season, the American and National leagues will be significantly revised.

By the looks of the most favored plan, they'll be split not by the Mason-Dixon Line or by the Mighty Mississippi but by the Windy City. Everything east of Chicago will be in the A.L., while everything west of and including Chicago will be in the N.L.

It actually makes sense. And many of those fans and administrators who have opposed it for so long have had an awakening.

An issue that once polarized those closest to Major League Baseball is no longer being treated with such obstinate, close-minded divisiveness.

Natural rivalries will be in. Natural wonders -- like how the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who begin play in 1998, could be placed in the American League West with Texas, Anaheim, Seattle and Oakland -- will be scuttled.

Actually, the howls from Tampa Bay and its fellow expansion-team-to-be in Phoenix pushed baseball's long-dormant realignment committee into action. Neither liked where it was being pigeonholed.

Rather than perpetuate the absurdity of two leagues that simply fell into place through decades of franchise shifts and piecemeal expansions, the realignment committee found itself attracted to Square One. Its proposal: Geography rules.

If enacted, baseball will realign with eight teams (Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota and Texas) moving from the A.L. to the N.L., and seven teams (Montreal, New York Mets, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Florida and Pittsburgh) switching from the N.L. to the A.L. Each league will have two divisions, and four teams from each league -- the two division winners plus two wild cards -- will qualify for the playoffs.

It's neat and logical, let alone financially beneficial when it comes to reducing travel costs.

Secondary issues like the designated hitter and the lack of a congruous strike zone in the two existing leagues can be resolved without resorting to fisticuffs.

With the horse unshackled, it's time to let loose of the reins.