I hate American League style baseball and the DH is not real baseball. If you're too worried about the pitcher getting hurt (and don't forget Steinbrenner made a big stink when Chien-Ming Wang hurt himself) - ANYBODY can get hurt on the basepaths, in the field & in the batter's box so don't baby these millionaires. Besides, I don't like what the DH does to pitchers & makes it that much more difficult to face a lineup. Stop tilting everything towards the hitters.

As for 15-team leagues, I still don't like the fact that it leads to Interleague Play, and playing the majority of your games against the league while a few random sporadic teams a few times in the other league. That does not create any sense of balance and it should be 14/16 league splits with a balanced league-only schedule. MLB did it before with varying league sizes & they could do it again, it's just Selig is too damn stupid & stubborn to admit Interleague Play is a failure & he's too focused on making money from those extremely rare Interleague heavy-attended series - never mind that Interleague Play takes away big draws in your own league (be it Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, Angels, Rays, Phillies, Cubs, Cardinals, Dodgers, etc). What I mean is, instead of hosting one of these teams say 9 times a year, you only get 3 or 4 or 6 because of quirky scheduling. "Natural Rivals" really only applies to maybe 4 to 6 teams total, and you can't just pick and choose the best ones & keep those because that's not balanced or fair either.

If anybody is wondering how the current schedule is broken down, check out my breakdown of the 2011 schedule:

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/3405/2011t.png

Wow - Stu came up with Bud Selig's original bad idea Interleague Play of focusing on one division; used from 1997-2001. A pending obese nation cried, "but I don't get to see Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa in my park! This stinks!!"

The main reason why Interleague Plays sucks donkey balls is because it ruins the biggest allure of the All Star Game & World Series: seeing the distinctly different leagues finally match up. When done less, it is much more special. When done more often, it becomes repetitive, tired & unremarkable like everything else done too often. Baseball had a great thing going for 127 years with having different leagues to keep things interesting. And what has happened since? Rating are in the tank for the ASG & WS. Funny how you've had WS with both #1 market teams in it & the #3 market v #4 market had some of the lowest-ever ratings for the WS. And with each passing year, ILP gets less & less special and basically makes it no different than seeing the Padres, Mariners, Pirates or Marlins no matter what league you're in.

Trust the traditionalists: getting rid of Interleague Play will benefit everyone including the fans a lot more than keeping it. If you were a Royals fan, why the hell would you want to play the Pirates every single year? Piss on playing teams from the other league; especially during a pennant race. I think after 15 years, the Yankees/Braves, Blue Jays/Phillies, White Sox/Pirates, etc have to proved to be absolute failures.

I have to agree with that^. I never liked Interleague because it meant unfair advantages for some and disadvantages for others. I still don't understand how the Yankees were to play 2 series against the Braves in the same year. I mean wth? And why haven't the Dodgers played in Yankees stadium since the AL East played against the NL west....

Now it might not matter for the division leaders, but for some teams if the WC race is neck and neck: one NL team plays the Yankees and another plays the Mariners, that's the difference b/w making the playoffs and going home (even with this 2 WC teams crap they have now). I totally agree that unless the 2 teams were big market teams like Yankees and Phillies in 2009, chances are the 2 teams in the WS would have played each other already and no one is going to care about watching. It's also made the ASG pointless since we now see regular AL vs NL teams. That 'it counts' crap just drove the stake deeper into its heart.

On the recent trade news, I am shocked the M's basically handed Ichiro Suzuki to the Yankees. I didn't expect this at all. I know they finally shut down Gardner (elbow issues) for the year, but wow is all I can say. The only good thing is that he doesn't try to hit for homers, so that's a welcomed change as Oakland embarrassed them in that 4 game sweep over the weekend. I am not saying this is going to do much for the team, but at least Ichiro will likely take a huge burden off of Ibanez and Jones in the OF now.

One very dangerous argument I'm trying to avoid (and it will be used in the future incorrectly; no doubt) is people are going to complain that "oh an AL team shouldn't have to play NL rules so late in a pennant race". In theory, you could have the AL team keep the DH while the NL does not, but that's not fair to the NL team. I really, really hope this doesn't turn into a pro-DH in the National League argument because that is the last thing I want to see happen. Ask the pitchers & see how many enjoy pitching to the DH.

Being against Interleague Play is also a preference thing. I grew up watching the leagues separate, Milwaukee was in the American League, a balanced schedule, certain teams looked a certain way (Padres in brown; cough cough cough!) bigger strike zones, Astroturf & cookie cutter stadiums, 6 or 7 team divisions, no Wild Cards, no Internet voting b.s. MLB sure has changed a lot in the past 22 years.

The 94 strike was devastating on so many levels. I could never understand why they had to have the strike before they finished the season... at least have a playoffs in 94 and worry about 95 later. Yankees and Expos were in playoff contention. I feel more sorry for the Expos on how if they had made the playoffs, they might've kept the team together and might've been more alluring to the home crowds instead of being 3rd class citizens in their crumbling dome in the 2000s.

I too agree with preferring the 2 divisions. If it's so much about adding an extra 2 teams to the playoffs, why not just make the best 4 teams in each league play? Basically either have the 2 divisions (with 2 wild cards or the 2nd best teams in each division play) or one single division and have the 1 play the 4 and 2 play the 3. That rewards teams with the best records and kicks out teams that fall short. No weak divisions and no need for this 2 wild card deal they have now.

Just a little note on Olympic Stadium: at the time, it wasn't even 20 years old during the Strike and only a few years ago did they finally pay off the stadium. Plus it used to be an outdoor stadium & they put a new roof on it in the late 1990s. The Strike did kill baseball in Montreal, tho at the time the Canadian dollar was much weaker & players got paid in Canadian money so they lost money in the conversion rate. Also the economics of baseball had not completely spiraled out of control, but if I had to guess, the Expos would had been a middle-low to low market & they probably couldn't have kept Walker, Alou, Pedro, etc anyway. Plus the Canadian Gov't was not going to build the Expos a new stadium because they just basically don't do that in Canada. Every year they put it off, the higher the cost, too. I think the Expos would be another Oakland A's / pre-2012 Marlins case.

Yes! No divisions, 1-4 seeding. The problem is, baseball doesn't like big divisions or teams "in 10th place" but that's stupid because people can read how many games out teams are. MLB just wants to sell more T-shirts & caps with divisions. And if MLB had half a brain, if they complained about uneven divisions in the National League, they could have easily broken them into 4 even divisions. That would probably be: Giants, Dodgers, Padres, D-Backs. Rockies, Astros, Braves, Pirates. Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds. Phillies, Nats, Mets & Marlins.