About Geoff Expertise Huge baseball trivia lover! I will attempt to answer anything you can think of when it comes to major league baseball. I have a large reference library of all things baseball. Try to stump me!
A question here about interleague play. Why is interleague play lumped into two mid season sessions? Why can't the leagues be equalled out (15 per league with 3 divisions of 5 each) and then have an interleague game/series throughout the season? Now during interleague play we see schedules of 14 interleague games and 1 national league game, isn't it possible for that to be 1 interleague game 7 American league and 7 national league games? I believe that the commish and the two leagues are pleased with interleague play and this format could allow evenness amongst the divisions. Comments? Also I noticed on the Baseball Almanac site that Fenway is adding 2,000 additional seats for this year....where? Also the day time figure was not changed from 2004 so will that figure remain the same? Thanks Geoff.
Answer Hi Frank,
Fenway Park is under constant renovations all as part of a long-range plan that won't really be complete until 2012. Here's a link to a slightly dated article about where some of the new seats will be:
Capacity numbers never seem to be as "fixed" a number as they should be. The number of seats generally not available for day games is as true now as it was in 2004. It seems like those seats in dead center field at Fenway are being included in the capacity number because "legal capacity" doesn't change day or night. The fact the Red Sox prevent people from sitting in the hitter's line of vision on day games is more of a courtesy to the player than anything else.
You won't see the interleague play format you described until fans have lost interest in interleague play (or until there are 32 teams, 16 in each league). Having 7 AL games, 7 NL games and 1 interleague game on any given day would make interleague play nearly invisible. So long as it can still be promoted as something special, MLB will continue to do so. Evening out the divisions (5 in each)doesn't seem to be much of a priority, especially when it involves odd numbers. 4 Divisions of 4 teams each will happen before you'll see three Divisions of 5 teams each.
In the NFL interleague games are spread out throughout the season. On any given weekend no one cares about how many interleague games are being played. When the football leagues first started playing each other though, it was a bigger deal because you got to see teams play each other who had never played each other before. Now it's no big deal. Just as some day baseball interleague play will be no big deal.
