Inter...esting

The weather in New England stinks.

Don't tell me about the beauty of the changing seasons, the yearly variety, the monotony of eternal sunshine, the first snowfall of the winter, or any other meterological justification for our misery. It just stinks.

I'm sitting here on a Tuesday in June and it is no more than 65 degrees and pouring. Yesterday it was over 90 with 100% humidity and from 93 north in Quincy a haze clouded the skyline so that it looked like a glimpse into a polution ridden future.

Maybe I'm stupid. I'm the idiot that waits around all snowy winter for May to arrive. Then when it's 45 and rainy the week leading up to Memorial Day I prophesize that it cannot get any worse. Then when the sun finally shines it's like someone kicked the ant hill, people everywhere squinting against that mysterious yellow beacon in the sky. I'm elated for those few weeks of the summer when it is truly comfortable here, and then in September I begin to dread the doldrums of winter again.

Thank you, but I've had enough. When the season at the Dockside ends I'm out like the perverbial fat girl in dodgeball.

Of course now that I finish this rant the rain is abetting and the sun is trying to poke it's teasing little grin out of the clouds. Here is where a lesser writer would resort to the old adage, "If you don't like the weather in New England just wait a minute." Instead I will fall upon and even more grizzled and over-effused expression of New Englander angst, "What the fuck!"

So, now that we have that out of the way, what do I want to write about?

Let's see. We have the Red Sox, but I'm not sure I have rant enough left in me to elucidate the seething volcano of rage I felt watching them play so horribly at Wrigley this past weekend. Sure they blew out the Reds last night, but Cincinnati hasn't been .500 since they beat the Sox in the World Series in the early '70s.

Instead...

How is it still unclear to baseball that Interleague play is a total and utter failure? It has completely lost its charm to me and the fact that the games are unfairly biased towards the National League is evident in the overall results. The American League is obviously the stronger, with the best teams (exclude the Cardinals) and the highest payrolls (yes that matters). Over the past 5 years the best teams in baseball have been, in no particular order the Yankees, Angels, Red Sox, Athletics (not this year), Braves, Cardinals, Twins, and this season the White Sox and Orioles. Yes the Marlins broke through and won the World Series 2 years ago, but they barely grabbed the Wild Card to get into those playoffs and consistently they haven't been there. Yet, the National League leads the overall interleague series 1124-1074. Those American League teams I mentioned are 504-469, a decent winning percentage for the top teams in the league. But if you exclude those top teams the American League is 570-755. Of course these stats can be a little deceiving since I did not exclude the top teams in the NL.

The point however, remains the same. The NL is killing the AL in these contests because having a DH makes the NL teams better while having to bat a pitcher makes the AL teams substantially worse. Furthermore, when the pitcher is a part of the batting order it forces teams to play NL style baseball (i.e. bunting, moving runners along, squeezing, etc.) but the DH does not force NL teams to play AL ball. All it allows them to do is pick and choose which style they would like to play based on given situations. Does this mean that the NL teams are better than the AL? Obviously not given that 10 of the last 15 World Champions have come from the AL. It just indicates that the games are unfairly slanted to favor the NL teams.

As if that were not reason enough to call interleague play a failure look at the unbalanced scheduling that it causes. Teams within the same division no longer play the same amount of games against the same teams, meaning that in a NL team could lose the division because they got swept by the Twins while their divisional counterparts swept the Royals. The geographic rivalries make cute story lines but while the Red Sox are playing the ever powerful Braves the Yankees are normally beating up on their brethren from Queens. An even greater injustice is done to the Braves themselves, while their "geographic" series matches them with the Red Sox their division rival Marlins are playing the perennial doormat Devil Rays. Unlike the divisional unbalanced schedule the other shoe never falls for the teams forced to play tougher competition, the geographic rivalries are the same every year causing the same teams to face the same injustice of having to overcome unfair scheduling season after season. So while the Braves are splitting with the Sox the Marlins will gain 2 games every season if they can take care of business against the D-Rays. Totally unfair, and no longer the novelty it once was.

It's time MLB to put a stop to the experiment. It was instituted to bring fans back after the strike of 1994. It worked. Fan attendence is back to where it was and baseball is once again America's past time, but it's time to renew the intrigue of the World Series and stop unfairly punishing teams who happen to be "geographically" matched up against tough competition.

But it's not going to happen. Attendence is up 7% during interleague play and if you think for a second that the owners are going to give up that kind of money (since it really is all about the $$) you're crazy. It will take a total lack of fan interest and a financial LOSS for the owners before this is going to change and such a development is nowhere in sight.

I know this is totally unrelated but the Lakers just re-hired Phil Jackson. I'm not even sure that I care. He cannot get along with Kobe, they don't have Shaq, Lamar Odom is a career long underachiever, and Vlade is 108 years old. Maybe his influence will get them back to the playoffs but how can they expect to compete with Phoenix, Seattle, Sacramento, Dallas, and especially San Antonio. If they were in the East this might mean something, but if they were in the east they wouldn't need Phil Jackson. My prediction: Phil retires still tied with Red Auerbach with 9 championship rings, in less than 3 years.

I'll now use the Phil story to segue into Game 3 of the NBA Finals tonight.

The Spurs are just impressive. There is no denying it. They ran all over Phoenix, out pacing the fastest and most athletic team in the league in a track meet. They beat them at their own game. In the first two games of the finals they have stuffed the Pistons tough minded defense right back down their throat, beating them at their own game. It's not like the NFL Champion Patriots who took what other teams wanted to do most and stopped it, the Spurs take what you want to do and do it better. It's not very exciting to watch but it certainly is impressive.

But now the series is back to Mo-Town, maybe the only advantage the Pistons have, but the only chance they have of crawling back into this series is if they take tonights game by the throat and don't let go. They have to shut down Ginobli, pack it in on Duncan, and make Parker, Horry, and Bowen beat them. Sure if Bowen hits 4 more 3's tonight it will undoubtably be over, but at this stage they have to take their chances. Who knows what they can do offensively? I think they can only hope to keep the game in the 70-80 range and try to pull it out at the end.

Don't you love how quickly we all jump on the Spurs bandwagon? If they lose tonight everyone will be saying, "Okay, now we've got a series! Look out for those scrappy Pistons." The media has been more fickle during these playoffs than I can ever remember. Think back to the beginning of the second round when after game 1 all the Stephen A. Gasbag's of the world were talking about 4 potetial sweeps. 3 of those series actually turned out to be interesting.

Riveting coverage of Sox interleague play continues tonight as they play game 2 of their crucial series with "rival" Cincinnati and their iron man Ken Griffey Jr..

What a joke.