Patrick Saunders at the Denver Post expresses his approval of the 2023 schedule that will have each team play at least one series against each team in the other league. He likes this because the Rockies don’t have a natural regional rival.

Rather than 16 interleague games, teams will have 46 such games on the schedule, four against their “geographic rival,” and three against the other 14 teams, alternating ballparks annually. The “geographic rival” for the Rockies is assumed to be the Rangers or the Astros.

MSN.com

This is the latest step in the path that stripped the leagues of their identities. It started with league presidents becoming figure heads and the separate league umpiring crews coming together under the MLB umbrella. It continues with the introduction of the universal DH and over a quarter of the games against the other league.

Should they really call them leagues anymore? When the American Football League merged with the National Football League, they dropped the league designations for the semi-final champions and went with the American and National conferences. There was no separate identity, as the AFC was made up of both AFL, and legacy NFL teams. I believe this makes it easier for the NFL to reconfigure divisions. Bug Selig had to blackmail the new buyers of the Astros to get them to move to the AL and even out the leagues.

So maybe it’s time for MLB to be “THE LEAGUE”, with the National Conference and American conference playing under the big league umbrella. It would then be easier to do some switching get rid of a few of the regional rivalries that aren’t that regional. If the Pirates and Tigers swapped leagues, then there would be a Pennsylvania rivalry, and a Detroit-Toronto rivalry. Also, if one of the Texas teams swapped with the Diamondback or Rockies, we could go back to a Texas rivalry and and add a mountain states rivalry.

With the identify of the leagues completely gone, there doesn’t seem to be a reason for the All-Star game anymore. Even before the DH, there were different approaches to pitching, different approaches to offense. Due to umpires wearing different types of chest protectors, the NL was a low strike league and the AL was high strike league. Players even saw themselves as members of the league. This is why the game was important to them; they won bragging rights for the league.

Today’s game seems much ado about nothing. Often times veteran players opt out so they can have a few days off. Managers try to showcase players, rather than all-out trying to win. I would personally be fine if the league just gave players a few days off.

In the past I suggested a winner-take-all monetary award to the winning team, maybe $25 million total. They don’t play for the love of the league anymore, let them play of the love of money.