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The Cooler is fresh off a spectacular Northern California weekend, skies as blue as the jerseys of the old Kansas City Kings, temperatures in that beautiful O-Line jersey range – nothing but high 60s and low 70s.
It's time for a young man's fancy to turn to our national pastime, and what better time than a weekend full of interleague ball. After all, nothing warms the cockles like a little Diamondbacks-Tigers tilt, conjuring up unforgettable memories of the time Al Kaline vacationed with his wife in Scottsdale in the winter of 1965, and stayed at the Biltmore. Point being: It's time to revise the interleague idea.
When it debuted in 1997, it was a bad gimmick designed to jack up attendance in a post-strike baseball landscape. I hated the idea with the same virulence that I hate the designated hitter. I'm a Luddite, really. That is, except for my use of a remote control, a cell phone, a laptop, a plasma-screen TV, a DVD player and an iPod. Other than that – I swear, new stuff sucks.
Then, a funny thing happened. I noticed that there were certain interleague matchups that worked. Yankees-Mets always made for good TV. So did Cubs-White Sox. And Dodgers-Angels. And, of course, Giants-A's.
On the other hand, I found a Padres-Mariners matchup as forced as a joke on "Joey."
Brewers-Twins, Marlins-Devil Rays, Braves-Red Sox ... there is no human reason the National and American League schedules should be interrupted to play these tilts. And don't give me the "Braves started in Boston" argument. By that logic, the Rangers and Twins should have a natural rivalry, since they both have roots in Washington, D.C.
So here's my idea to solve this problem: Selected Interleague.
Because the Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels and Giants-A's series are such natural fits, and because they create such good ball talk in each market, spiking attendance and heralding the arrival of summer, let's revamp this interleague nonsense.
No more Arizona-Detroit games. No more Braves-Royals games. No more Rangers-Mets games.
Every two years, one weekend a year, the Big Four rivalries in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the Bay Area, play one series. A three-game break to stir up talk, stir up energy and stir up ballparks.
Yes, it's unbalanced. Yes, teams could argue that divisional rivals played different schedules if they finish one game out come October. But that's where we're at now. Since '97, the Marlins, Yankees, D-Backs, Angels and Red Sox have won World Series titles while playing unbalanced, unfair schedules.
So why not streamline the interleague process to make it only the best of the best? Big-market rivalries shine; nonsensical matchups fade away; and we do it only once every two years, to whet the appetite.
You don't have to thank me for the idea. Just send money, please, and flowers for the wife.
On, then, to the Weekend List of Five:
1. The Final Four
How different would the NBA playoffs be viewed if we started marketing the Western and
Eastern conference finals as "The Final Four"? It might work, boys. It does OK for the kids. As it is, we'll settle for a final four as appealing as any I can remember since the Pat Riley Knicks turned the NBA into the WWE. As one of the many American sports fans who spends October-April intermittently hitting the Snooze Button on the NBA season, I find myself oddly aroused by the idea of Suns-Spurs in the West, and, albeit less so, by Heat-Pistons in the East.