Interleague Play!

June has nearly rolled around, and baseball fans know what that means.  Interleague Play, played annually with between 12 and 18 games for each team, plays one weekend series in May and then takes up most of the schedule in June.  Because there are two more NL teams than AL, there are always two NL teams that play each other and not the opposite league.  This year the two were the Pirates and Braves, but last year the Cubs played the Padres.  From a big Interleague Play fan, it sucked playing a regular old San Diego team instead of some team might haven't seen in half a decade.  Luckily, the Cubs got the play the Rangers this year in May.  The last time the Cubs played in Texas was 2007, the series highlighted by Sammy Sosa hitting his 600th homer against the only team in baseball he hadn't homered against, the Cubs.   Fast-forward three years to this series, and the Cubs dropped the opener scoring only one run in arguably the best hitters park in the game.  The Cubs took the next two thanks to more clutch hitting and fundamental baseball, including this skill called fielding.  The Cubs didn't really look they knew knew how to do that, but apparently they can field a bit.  The series left the Cubs with a winning percentage of 48.6%, from a record of 92-97. 

I root for the National League every year.  Unfortunately, the NL has won more games only four out of 13 years, the last being 2003.  The overall advantage for the AL, however, is less lobsided than it would seem at 1,693-1,556.  The NL also hasn't won an All-Star Game since 1996.  This has been very frustrating, as every AL team since 2003 has known that they can cruise into the World Series with however bad record and still earn home field advantage.  ESPN SportsNation polls have shown that the fans weren't ever in favor of MLB's poor effort to make the All-Star Game worth something.  What if the Interleague Play record of each league decided the World Series home field advantage?  That would be a much truer measure of the better league and now those players who complain about having to face players they've never seen before will have more motivation instead to win those games. 

The Cubs and Sox play six games each year, three at each park.  The reason there are two series is because they qualify as a rivalry matchup and therefore get the extra series at the other park.  Some other examples are: Houston-Texas, New York (Mets)-New York (Yankees), Florida-Tampa Bay, Los Angeles (Angels)-Los Angeles (Dodgers), San Francisco-Oakland, Boston-Atlanta, Cincinnati-Cleveland, St. Louis-Kansas City, and Milwaukee-Minnesota.

So next up for the Cubs will be the Sox, at Wrigley early in June on a weekend.  For the next two weeks the Cubs will play the remaining three teams in the AL West besides the Rangers, playing the A's and Angels at home and then the Mariners on the road, wrapping it up with the Sox at US Cellular.  We get to play an entire division this year, 18 games!  Although the Cubs and the rest of the NL are, as mentioned before, not usually as good in Interleague Play, I still love watching it because it is so unique and a great change.  And the Cubs-Sox games are, Cubs-Sox games.