Personally, I’ve had enough of Interleague play in MLB.
I know it’s not going anywhere as it’s been deemed a success by MLB and truthfully, it probably is.
The strength of the few "natural rivalries" in places such as New York, Chicago and Texas outweighs the general apathy in Seattle, Phoenix, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Toronto.
Regardless of my acknowledgement of its success, I can’t enjoy Interleague play. Thankfully, witnessing the Jays tough weekend in Atlanta aided me in getting to the root of my issue – it’s not the concept of Interleague play, it’s the unfortunate truth that some of my worst memories of working in the Blue Jays front office occurred while playing the Senior Circuit.
My first traumatic memory took place in the initial summer I worked for the club, more specifically July 1, 1997, Canada Day.
This was the day Roger Clemens was out-dueled at the SkyDome by Montreal Expos starter Jeff Juden, the latter leaving the game to a standing ovation.
Granted, Juden pitched very well, he was having a good season and there were thousands of Expos fans in the crowd.
But the whole stadium stood for the opposing pitcher.
At least that was just one game.
From that point on it seemed like every time we went to a National League park, we were swept. There was the 2002 sweep at the hands of the Expos on the front end of a two-week road trip where the Jays visited Montreal, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tampa.
Trust me, it’s a looong flight to Los Angeles from Montreal when you’ve just been swept. In 2003 we were swept in St. Louis. In 2004 it was the Giants and in 2005 it was the Astros taking all three, this time at the end of a two-week road trip.
The 2006 season was doubly frustrating as we got swept twice in National League yards. First it was in Colorado, where not only did we get swept – but we only hit one home run in our first series in the Mile High State.
Perhaps they tested the humidor on us.
About a month later the Marlins took the brooms to us in Miami. In the final game of that series, we had a chance to jump ahead of Josh Johnson in the first inning after loading the bases with none out, but Troy Glaus hit into the standard 1-2-3 double play to kill that rally.
Even a 4-6-3 double play would have given us a lead. After avoiding the NL brooms in 2007, the 2008 sweep at the hands of the Brewers helped lead to the dismissal of John Gibbons.
We used to rack our brains trying to figure out why we played poorly in Interleague.
We tried adding pitching, adding more players to the bench, having the pitchers start taking BP sooner and we even tried keeping everything the same.
Obviously none of it was effective.
Now the trend continues in 2009 with the sweep at the hands of the Braves. At least I know this, I no longer work there – so it hasn’t been my fault all this time.