| | Associated Press
HOUSTON -- Just about everyone in baseball agrees on the
need for a new kind of schedule, with more intradivision games and
September matchups among contenders.
How to do it is another matter.
And that's why major-league owners have put off a decision on
realignment until June. But commissioner Bud Selig promises changes
will indeed be coming.
"There will be some realignment," he said Monday night after
owners cut short their spring meeting, having completed their
agenda in one day. "We'll go to an unbalanced schedule, rotate
divisions. Everything I wanted to do, I will do."
For the first 60 years of the 1900s, it was simple: each league
had eight teams, and each team played every other team 22 times for
a 154-game season.
Then came expansion to 10 teams per league, and each team played
every other team 18 times for a 162-game schedule.
When the American and National leagues increased to 12 teams
apiece in 1969, each league split into two six-teams divisions, and
there was a major change: Teams still had 18 games against division
rivals, but they cut games against teams in the other division to
12.
And in 1977, came another major change: The AL increased to 14
teams and went to the so-called balanced schedule: 13 games against
division rivals, 12 against teams in the other division. For the
first time, interdivision games outnumbered intradivision games.
"A one-year experiment which lasted 23 years -- which is not
unusual in baseball," Selig said.
Since each league split into three divisions in 1994 and
interleague play began in 1997, each schedule has become a
patchwork. Teams in the same city are home at the same time, teams
crisscross the country on long road trips, intradivision games
dwindled.
"The biggest problem we've had is clubs really don't like the
schedule," Selig said. "They've grumbled."
So Selig, working with Boston Red Sox chief executive officer
John Harrington, Philadelphia Phillies CEO Dave Montgomery and NL
senior vice president Katy Feeney, settled on this as the best
option for 2001:
Arizona would move to the AL West.
Texas would move to the AL Central.
Tampa Bay would move to the NL.
The NL would have four four-team divisions.
The AL would have six teams in the Central, four each in the
East and West.
"The National League works out pretty well," Selig said. "The
only real negative one has heard is there's no wild card."
Under this plan, each NL team would play 20 games against each
division rival, AL East and AL West teams would play 18 each, and
AL Central teams would play 14 each against three division rivals,
15 apiece against the other two.
Filling out the schedule would be interdivision and interleague
games.
But teams in the AL Central object to a six-team division. And
some NL owners don't want to lose the wild card, which allows more
teams to remain in contention until the season's final weeks.
"There's so much up in the air that has to be considered,"
Harrington said before updating owners. "We'll let them think
about it, see where it goes."
Harrington says three plans remain under consideration, with
more possibilities ahead. Under most plans, the NL remains with 16
teams, but one has 15 teams in each league -- with at least one
interleague game nearly every day.
Arizona owner Jerry Colangelo has been the biggest objector. He
doesn't want to leave the NL.
Only the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays, the two newest teams in
the majors, can be forced to change leagues against their will.
Every other team has veto power over league shifts.
"The NL made a mistake putting Arizona there," Kansas City
Royals president Mike Herman said. "That has to be corrected."
David Glass, the Royals new owner, was among the proponents of
radical realignment in 1997. In that plan, there would be major
shifts, with teams grouped geographically.
Several traditional NL teams objected, not wanting to blur
distinctions and not wanting two teams from the same market in the
same division. That message got through to central baseball.
"I do believe in geographical rivalries," Selig said, "but
the leagues do have this history and tradition."
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