{"id":23612,"date":"2010-05-21T12:16:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T12:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesportsrabbi.wordpress.com\/?p=10"},"modified":"2010-05-21T12:16:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T12:16:52","slug":"interleague-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsrabbi.com\/en\/interleague-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Interleague Fun!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

AH, Interleague\u00a0play is upon us once again. Yankees Vs. Mets-The\u00a0Subway Series, Whitesox\u00a0Vs. Cubs-The Windy City Series, Dodgers Vs. Angels-The Freeway Series, Cardinals Vs. Royals-The 1-70 Series, Rays Vs. Astros-The, ah, er, what, not sure, Rays blow out series vs. the worst team in the National League Series.<\/p>\n

There are pluses and minuses to Interleague\u00a0play, that is for sure, and critics galore on one side saying that the integrity of the game has been tampered with\u00a0to, boy it’s awesome to be able to see players like Albert Pujols in places like Cleveland and\u00a0Detroit on the other.<\/p>\n

Going into the 14th year of Interleague\u00a0play I believe that this has been a great innovation to the game. The ability of creating a little more juice for a long 162 game season is OK in my books. For the many years that I as a baseball fan dreamed of seeing now the Montreal Expos fared against the Blue Jays or Yankees finally came to fruition back in 1997.<\/p>\n

Watching the Yankees host the Mets at Yankee stadium was one of the greatest thrills in The Sports Rabbi’s career, and the ticket stub from the game is seen above.<\/p>\n

Remembering back to that night, Yankee Stadium was filled to capacity with the atmosphere of a\u00a0Play-off game. The fans were all over the place to welcome (not a red carpet welcome I might add) the Mets to the “House that Ruth Built”.<\/p>\n

The game itself for a Yankee fan was a 6-0 dud for the Mets. The hitting star for the Yankees that night was a catcher by the name of Joe Girardi\u00a0going 3-4 and calling the game for yesterday’s Yankees starter, Andy Pettitte.<\/p>\n

No one knew at the time but this would be a prelude to the Subway Series a few years later in 2000 as the two teams battled it out for the World Series Championship. And yes I was at two of those games also.<\/p>\n

Added intensity to this year’s series is that fact that it\u00a0may spell the end of Jerry Manuel as Mets\u00a0manager, so the storylines are a\u00a0 little thicker than usual for an Interleague\u00a0Yankees Vs. Mets matchup in New York this weekend.<\/p>\n

Those positives definitely outweigh the negatives of some of the less interesting series and fact that the American League pitchers have to bat at the National League parks which they are unaccustomed too.\u00a0 The strength of schedule also comes into play just as it does in the NFL for some of the games, and this can be a disadvantage to some teams<\/p>\n

For example the Cardinals get to tee off against the Royals for 6 games and some teams in one division won’t play the same opponents\u00a0as another team in their own division\u00a0because divisions don’t contain the same amount of teams. (i.e. the NL Central has 6 teams, the AL East has only 5 teams)<\/p>\n

My brother, “The Doc” a die hard\u00a0Montreal Expos fan\u00a0has seen his fair\u00a0share of Interleague\u00a0games beginning with a hot and heavy Montreal Expos Vs. Toronto Blue Jays series. The ‘Spos took 2 out 3 games, including\u00a0two 2-1 victories at the Sky Dome with Pedro Martinez besting Pat Hentgen\u00a0followed by a Canada Day special with Jeff Juden taking down Roger Clemens.<\/p>\n

The Doc also joined me for the Expos Vs. Yankees game on Sunday July 18, 1999. A game that he wished he wasn’t at. Why you ask? Well how about a 6-0 perfect game by David Cone caught by, you guessed it, Joe Girardi, current manager of the Yankees.<\/p>\n

This game caused irreversible damage to The Doc and he could never root for the Yankees again. Though he was at the Yankees Game 4 World Series Clincher that same year against the Braves, wearing a Yankees hat I might add, he could never bring himself to root for them again and switched allegiances to the Red Sox, savoring in their 2 world Championships in the past decade.<\/p>\n

That one Interleague game scarred him for life!<\/p>\n

All in all the positives of Interleague play outweigh the negatives and in general are enjoyed by all the fans in attendance, er well maybe not all of them.<\/p>\n

Thoughts from the\u00a0Pulpit!<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) The Atlanta Braves are HOT, HOT\u00a0HOT! 3 straight walk off wins this week including a 7 run 9th inning Vs the Reds, with Conrad Brooks topping it off with a grand slam that was almost caught by Laynce Nix. The win moved the Braves to a game over .500, 21-20 4.5 game behind division leader Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

2) The Canadiens\u00a0are HOT, HOT, HOT! The Habs win at home in front of over 20,000 rabid Montreal fans 5-1 http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/nhl\/recap?gameId=300520010<\/a>\u00a0and now trail the Flyers 2-1 in the best of 7 series. Roman Hamrlik\u00a0played a strong game along with Dominic Moore and Tom Pyatt who each added a goal and an assist. The crowd should be in a frenzy Saturday afternoon for game 4, which me being in Israel can watch Hockey Night in Canada!<\/p>\n

3) Can Brett Favre\u00a0please go away? Please? How will a College World Series game decide his future. This is crazy. Does he feel jealous that The NBA, NHL & MLB\u00a0have been overshadowing the “Where is Brett Favre Going” story? http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/nfl\/news\/story?id=5205640<\/a>\u00a0Brett really needs to get a life and quick. I can’t believe that he continuously\u00a0needs to be on the front pages of the sports section. Well I should believe it, because he is Brett Favre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AH, Interleague\u00a0play is upon us once again. Yankees Vs. Mets-The\u00a0Subway Series, Whitesox\u00a0Vs. Cubs-The Windy City Series, Dodgers Vs. Angels-The Freeway Series, Cardinals Vs. Royals-The 1-70 Series, Rays Vs. Astros-The, ah, er, what, not sure, Rays blow out series vs. the worst team in the National League Series. There are pluses and minuses to Interleague\u00a0play, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[208],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nInterleague Fun! - Sports Rabbi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsrabbi.com\/en\/interleague-fun\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interleague Fun! - Sports Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"AH, Interleague\u00a0play is upon us once again. Yankees Vs. Mets-The\u00a0Subway Series, Whitesox\u00a0Vs. Cubs-The Windy City Series, Dodgers Vs. Angels-The Freeway Series, Cardinals Vs. Royals-The 1-70 Series, Rays Vs. Astros-The, ah, er, what, not sure, Rays blow out series vs. the worst team in the National League Series. 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