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1. RMc is the loyal supporter of the MLB event Posted: May 16, 2008 at 12:42 PM (#2782956)But there is no feeling of rivalry in Philadelphia towards Toronto -- the Phils fans did not expect that team to accomplish anything, much less get to the WS.
EDIT: In fact, the Phils fans focus their mild '93 WS anger on Fregosi, for robomanaging with Mitch Williams. Must use closer, must use closer, don't care if arm has been shot for 2 months, must use closer.
feeling evoked by interleague play
The Cardinals did their spring training in downtown St Pete for 60 years, at the proposed location for the Ray's new digs, so there's something there.
Yeah this game's gonna be #### compared to Tampa's usual heated rivalry games.
Will never happen. DC fans don't care enough about their OWN team, much like a rivalry with the Orioles. This one's never gotten off the ground and never will. DC fans care about their own division, and the O's fans care about the Yanks and Sox...not each other.
At least the Phillies' fans aren't coming to Camden any more. That's a blessing.
My biggest issue with the "eh, interleague games that are semi-interesting", is that they still run into the DH/non-DH issue. There needs to be a good reason to play these games, IMO.
Did a quick calculation of total attendance the first Friday of interleague play last year (462,202) with the closest in time Friday game of each of the same 14 home teams (438,826). The total increase was about 6%, but obviously could have been affected by weather, other promotions, etc. Oak, Mil and the Mets saw the biggest increases; in the other cities the differences were negligible.
edited to remove numbers from one national league matchup
It's not like if there were no interleague play, they would just be taking the time off. They'd still be playing baseball.
Dodgers/Angels and Giants/A's aren't real rivalries. I live in San Francisco, and nobody I know gets excited for the Bay Area series.
I am a former resident of the Bay Area, and agree with you on the A's/Giants, but I know plenty of people down south here who are very interested in the Dodgers/Angels series. For the Angels, I would say it slightly surpasses interest in their matchups with the Red Sox and Yankees, and greatly surpasses all other series.
The Boston Braves started in the National Association as the Boston Red Stockings. The Orioles started out as the Milwaukee Brewers, then moved to St. Louis where they became the Browns before moving on to Baltimore, from where an Orioles team moved long ago to New York, eventually becoming the Yankees.
So, any matchup between any two of New York, Boston, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Seattle can be considered Red Sox / Yankees.
Throwing out the first pitch, Kevin Bacon.
Nevertheless, when I get home tonight I'm gonna watch the archive of Pittsburgh/Chicago Cubs.
Or, I would if it wasn't going to be 100 degrees in my house until 1am. So I'm actually gonna get trashed at some air conditioned bar. There goes the stimulus check I got today.
That's another reason why I don't like the "regional" rivals. Too many visiting fans in our stadium. Kauffman gets flooded with Cardinals fans. I'm sure US Cellular gets flooded with Cubs fans. I know, I know, if we filled up our own stadium, we wouldn't have this problem. Still, its annoying.
If you've ever checked out Chicago Craigslist rants and raves section, you'll find evidence that this is true before, during and after the IL series.
You'll also find plenty of other crap that will make you despair for the fate of humankind.
What the hell is a real rivalry then? One in which fans get shot in the parking lot? The Angels/Dodgers rivarly in Southern California is quickly catching the dulling Giants/Dodgers rivalry. Unlike decades past, Moreno's Angels have staked major territorial claims in the Southland. Recently, Dodger fans can't ignore the Angels anymore.
I'd have to agree with this. Where are all of the howling protests when the Twins play the Marlins? Are teams supposed to have A)Rivalries with every team that they play, or B)Only play teams that they have rivalries with? I mean, sure some people would like to see 162 Yankees vs. Red Sox games, but not most.
The Twins are in Colorado tonight, and it's not any bigger (or lesser) deal than when the Astros or Braves are here. The one time interleague play made a difference was when the Yankees were in town last year: All three weekday games sold out very quickly.
And of course the Rockies swept the series.
There was a certain juice in playing a team 22 times a year. You got pretty familiar with your in-league foes. And since you only saw the AL (in my case) at the AS and WS games and possibly the Game of the Week, the other league was a mystery.
But with the doubling of the number of teams, your own league is not that familiar any more so the diff between interleague and a non-division game is close to nil. That's why I check the "Meh" box on the ESPN poll about how I fell about interleague play.
Leaving aside whether DC fans care enough about their own team -- or whether O's fans have been lulled to death by a decade of suck -- the fanbases have a common enemy in Angelos. A good rivalry doesn't really rise up by way of enemy-of-your-enemy-is-your-friend.
This got even more concentrated in the 1970s. You only played intradivision rivals 18 times, but there were only five of them, and the entire month of September was intradivision. I really liked that arrangement. And I sort of like the current imbalanced schedules, as one of the least bad of many options for a 30-team MLB.
Sure it does...it gives me 3+ more hours of free time per day to get things done.
That sounds like pretty incompetant marketing if they can't get the fans fired up about that!
The difference being that Phillies/Cardinals isn't presented as part of some bold daring visionary plan to Save Major League Baseball in the same way that Interleague Plague is spun.
Part of it is geography - A's fans and Giants fans usually don't rub elbows. While there's a bit of overlap, for the most part, the fans stay on their respective side of the Bay.
Part of it is that there are a lot of transplants in the Bay Area. It's harder to get tickets to see the A's play the Red Sox or the Yankees than it is to see them play the Giants.
And part of it is the general culture about professional sports on the West Coast. It just isn't the same as it is back East for whatever reason.
I'd accept a home/home vs rival and maybe adding a 4 game set every other year or something. Right now though, the races are just starting to get interesting and this rears it's ugly head.
I'm curious about some of the more wild conspiracy-based theories about Interleague.
The Minnesota/Milwaukee series does have some old rivalry leftover from when the Brewers were in the AL. My mom still makes the drive from Minneapolis to Milwaukee every summer to see the Twins play there, just as she has since the early 80s.
Oh, please. The guy is supposedly hated by the 'vast' Nats fanbase for trying to protect his turf, and by O's fans for hiring a bunch of boobs to run his team/meddling with said team. Now the Nats' fans have their team (not that most of them can be bothered with actually going to see it, mind you), and he's hired good people in his front office and has butted out.
So now he's being blamed for putting a damper on the interleague series?
As far as I can tell, the problem is that a lot of Nats' fans were O's fans for a long time, so they can't work up a good lather (this is obviously excepting the 'Boswell Bunch' who decided that Angelos is the Anti-Christ for not wanting another team 40 miles from his)...plus, there's just no history; it's just not like Chicago or NY.
Besides, when you attend a Redskins game and hear the resounding 'O' during the National Anthem, it pretty much tells you that a 'rivalry' isn't about to break out anytime soon.
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