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Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Why baseball fans, why? (inter-conference play)
This issue never exists in NHL, NFL, or presumably NBA. Indeed, in the NHL, where fans have been treated to varying degrees of inter-conference play over the years, the consensus is that you want some inter-conference play. Definitely not zero inter-conference play. But also not a completely balanced schedule (back when they had 21 teams, they at times played 4 games against each team, whether intra-conference or inter-conference).
Now, I am an equally big NHL fan as I am an MLB fan (*). And I don’t have this split personality where I treat the two leagues as so different that the argument I’d make for NHL inter-conference play would be the opposite that I’d make for MLB inter-conference play. We talked about this in the past, where we noted that in the other three leagues, about 20-25% of all games played are inter-conference, but that in MLB, it’s 10%. So, if there should be a push on changing the inter-conference play in MLB, it should be toward what the other leagues have determined through a longer history of inter-conference play, and that would mean doubling the number of MLB inter-conference games.
(*) In the old days in the 1980s, we’d call it Baseball or Major League Baseball, and never MLB. I don’t know when MLB came along, but it was probably a useful internet shorthand.
But still, you get fans imploring for a switch to no inter-conference play at all. And I don’t think those same fans would make the argument for the other leagues they watch.
So, the question is why? Is it inertia (nee tradition) or status quo? Is it that they are still old enough to remember no inter-conference games at all? Is it that MLB calls their two conferences “leagues”, when they are really conferences (they share all rules, except the DH; they share the draft; etc)?
Why would a fan that follows at least two of these leagues treat MLB so differently? I’m not talking about baseball-only fans; I’m talking about fans of baseball plus other leagues. This question goes out to them.
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