For more than a decade now, fans of baseball have been treated to a series of games played outside of the American and National League’s segregated structure. As with any change to a professional sport, interleague play is not without its opponents. Many purists want the AL and NL teams to meet only in the World Series and All-Star Game.

Two weeks ago, Interleague play kicked off again and to no one’s surprise, the AL won more than lost. Just before the league swapping began Atlanta Braves star-player Chipper Jones was quoted as being in opposition to the current format.

For the first five years of Interleague play, divisions would play divisions, AL East versus NL East and so on. In 2002, that changed when a policy was adopted to ensure that regional rivals would play each other annually in home and away series, but the divisional match-ups would vary from year to year.

I’ve not been a fan of Larry the Chipper Guy and certainly don’t take his word or actions as a moral compass, but I do think he has a point worth discussing on this issue. The way the schedules come out is certainly anything but level. Take the world champion St. Louis Cardinals for instance; they battle the lowly Kansas City Royals six times while the Cubs, Brewers and Reds tangle with the White Sox, Twins and Indians respectively. The latter three NL Central teams are looking to be 3-3 or 2-4 while the Cards should be 4-2 or 5-1 against a lower level competitor. In a week’s time, the Cards would gain two or three games on all significant competitors within the division due to the jaded schedule.

 I understand that the baseball season is incredibly long and the rest of the division has 156 games to make up the difference, but why should they have to? If the schedule came out and the Cubs got to play the Pirates 20 times and only had to play the Cardinals eight, wouldn’t it be considered a travesty in Missouri and southern Illinois?

Interleague play was designed to bring in more fans. Each and every year raucous fans show up in droves to see the Cubs-White Sox, Mets-Yankees and Dodgers-Angels cross-town series. I, for one, love when the Cubs and White Sox square off although it generally appeals to the lowest common denominator of fan. It allows everyone to be an idiot sports fan for a weekend. Do other, smaller markets get as excited? Is the Rays-Marlins rivalry big? The Royals-Cardinals? A’s-Giants? I think they do. Obviously, the scale is smaller because of a decreased populous in comparison to the others. But what about other manufactured rivalries? Who in Seattle or San Diego is super-excited for the long-awaited showdown of the Mariners and Padres? You know M’s fans just can’t wait to give Mike Cameron the business!

The real question here is, how can you possibly make it “fair?” The answer is, you can’t. Unless you run all the games through a computer simulator and have them played in a dome, there will not be a perfectly level field. Even if you weighted the Interleague schedules based on the previous season’s standings (#1 AL vs. #1 NL, #2 AL vs. #2 NL) you would have problems. If you made the schedule according to payroll, you’d have problems. There’s no prefect solution.

Is it fair that a team like the Detroit Tigers can battle the Twins, Indians and White Sox all year long and then surpass teams like the Yankees and A’s in playoff baseball to make it to the World Series; while a team like the Cardinals cherry picked a horrid division, winning a whopping 83 games (13^th best in baseball) and put together a nice little playoff run to match them in the Fall Classic? No, not really. It’s even less fair that the best team in baseball for almost an entire season will be forgotten as the team that got smoked in the 2006 World Series by a team that played about three weeks of really nice baseball.

So Chipper and anyone else that wants to complain that Interleague play isn’t fair should shut up and go win the ballgames in front of them. Life isn’t fair. Deal with it.

It should be noted that Mr. Jones’ comments were taken following a drubbing of 13-2 at the hands of the Pittsburgh Pirates and immediately followed by the Bravos dropping 3-of-4 to the Washington Nationals. If and when Atlanta finishes a couple games out of a playoff spot and the issue is revisited; let us all please remind Chipper that losing 4 out of 5 games against AAAA baseball teams probably hurt them every bit as much as whatever will happen versus the Red Sox!