Columnist Dean Juipe: Interleague games liven dull season

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, June 18, 2002 | 9:26 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Once upon a time, baseball was so laden with tradition that to even propose a change was sacrilegious.

But then came expansion as well as the 162-game schedule, to say nothing of designated hitters, steroids and lively balls.

Soon afterward even the most immortal of individual records was obliterated, and, periodically thereafter, obliterated again.

Hence, a sport that once revered its past now lives solely for today.

As such, maybe it isn't that big of a jump to suggest the American and National leagues remove the barriers and welcome full interleague play. The divisions and leagues can stay intact, but the teams would routinely play a round-robin schedule of sorts that would allow every fan in every city the opportunity to see every team.

Interleague play, of course, exists in a modified and limited form today. This year, for example, NL West teams are playing games vs. the AL East, while the NL Central meets the AL West and the NL East plays the AL Central.

Why not just take the next step and embrace a full interleague schedule? Logistically as well as mathematically, it can be worked out.

Why shouldn't the New York Mets and New York Yankees play a home-and-home series every year? Why shouldn't Cincinnati and Cleveland be matched once or twice a season? Or San Francisco and Oakland? Or even teams with no geographic link, such as Boston and Arizona?

Interleague play not only makes economic sense, it would rid baseball of what I think is the monotonous, humdrum practice of having division rivals playing each other over and over ad infinitum. You know the way it goes: One weekend Kansas City is at Minnesota and the next it's Minnesota at Kansas City; two weeks later they start the cycle over again.

The team I grew up watching and still follow played 10 of its first 31 games against the same team and split the other 21 games between a mere four other teams. The argument that familiarity breeds contempt might be applicable in hockey, but in baseball it's tedious and without proven merit.

Attendance is down a few percentage points this season, and high prices and the threat of a work stoppage only partially explain the decrease. To me, it's just as likely that the fans in Kansas City are simply tired of seeing the Royals play the Twins.

People need a little variety and interleague play is an attractive option, even if the dullards in Florida could muster only a crowd of 9,380 to see Sunday's game between the Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Everywhere else -- including Montreal, where a noteworthy gathering of 15,425 showed up to see the Expos' series finale with the Toronto Blue Jays -- fans have been receptive when it comes to welcoming teams from the other league.

This season, the NL leads 67-59 as interleague play resumes tonight, albeit for a few, abbreviated days.

I say baseball would be better off playing interleague games all season, and for those wondering what to do with the designated hitter I'd further recommend using the rules of the league of the visiting team.

See, it's easy.

Change is good.