This morning, I wrote the below letter to the Commissioner of MLB, Robert D. Manfred. He quickly actually replied, a very brief comment that simply stated he appreciated my thoughtful letter, that he agreed with some of what I had to say and disagreed with other things. Below is the letter I wrote to him within the previous hour. Note that per the email time stamps, my email was sent at 6:19 AM Eastern and he replied 18 minutes later.

Good morning Mr. Commissioner. Before I get to the main concern of my letter, I do want to thank you for getting others at the league to respond to my concern about the Audacy audio service. I do regret to inform you that as of today, two months after my first letter, the conditions with this concern over Audacy have not improved. I have continued to provide feedback to the customer service response team that reports to be sharing my feedback with the provider.

I want to get to the main topic of my letter though and this concerns the situation with the Rays and Athletics and future ballparks. I have to tell you, having been to every big league market, the problem in Oakland is not the fans. The problem there is the owner and I understand that in order to do your job, you must make all of the owners happy, something that is an almost impossible task. But there is an old basic truth about business, if you sell something that the buyers don’t approve of because the consumer thinks it is substandard, they are going to at some point realize that it is not worth their trouble to buy the product. That is what has happened with the Oakland situation.

Tampa Bay is different, it is a bad ballpark location and many fans even now are not showing up, even though that franchise has tried and continues to try to put a truly big league product on the field. Why they are considering building a new venue near the current one that most folks don’t want to attend is questionable, but that franchise is trying. The Athletics franchise has not been trying. That team drew more than 20K a night in 2019 and had a 55K sellout for a playoff. No one had fans in 2020 and when baseball begin to come back in 2021, choices made by the Athletics limited them to just 12K per game on nights when the Coliseum was able to sell every seat, that’s based on a USA Today analysis. Then they gut the team further and increase ticket prices while threatening to move to Vegas. Economics 101 says that is not at all how you are going to grow your business. In fact if this were a regular business not part of a league and prop up by a league, it would no longer exist under its current management, it would have just died or a new owner and management team would have taken over.

Now we come to today, the team trying like crazy to force itself upon the people of Vegas. But Las Vegas has been told by many fans, in and out of Oakland, including this one, that they would be better off with an expansion owner. Why? The Athletics owner clearly only wanted to use the team as a way to try and get more money into his pocket. Now he’s in a situation where the team went from wanting lots of land and a Oakland style Battery, which was the first mistake, to now wanting just nine acres in the middle of a piece of land owned by a Vegas hotel builder. The whole presentation about Vegas has been in my view done in such a way that no one there wants that franchise. Starting games at 4PM so the tourists can come to a partially retractable roof park on a 100 degree day, no thank you, especially since many of the hard working tax paying public this has been forced upon would not be able to get away from work to attend the games if they were scheduled like that. The drop in attendance due to the abuse of the fans by the owner due to no effort in fielding a truly MLB capable team in Oakland is why the attendance has crashed, not the ballpark. The Oakland situation is very much like Montreal, it was not the fans there either, it was the owner and the fans eventually gave up. But more damning is the fact that we see the results of bad ownership and owner abuse of fans playing in Miami. I have pointed out to others online that some of the worst seasons for attendance in Miami have been after the franchise got what it wanted, a bran new stadium. The Marlins club has not had a winning season in a standard 162 game campaign since 2009 and the top three seasons for Miami attendance were 1993, 1994, and 1997 at the former venue it called home.

It has also been pointed out by others that the new Marlins ballpark is on 17 acres, you won’t get a retractable park in Vegas on just nine acres. So the people in Vegas have been told, an expansion owner would be better. With that, I want to share my ideas and proposals to get you out of a bad box you are in. Let’s start with the big elephants in the room, the Athletics and public dollars for building new stadiums. It has been proven time and time again that spending big public dollars on a ballpark that might be torn down or replaced by another one in 20-30 years Rangers and Braves style is no longer sitting well with the public. Many conservatives view it as a waste of tax dollars, liberals like me view it as a completely unnecessary grift and corporate giveaways to the uber wealthy who have the resources to build anything they want. Mr. Manfred, you are going to find that many communities would love to have baseball, if Austin could get a team, I’d love it for the city I call home. But I won’t support using government money to build something where all the risk is on our tax base and the benefit goes to the private pockets of a man who lives the life of a royal king. We fought in this nation for freedom and for the ability to not be ruled by a class of kings. So you are going to have to find ownership that can privately afford to build the stadium.

About Oakland specifically, I think you need to treat Mr. Fisher similarly to what was done with the McCourt family that used to own the dodgers. Make him sell the team and give it to a local buyer that will keep it in Oakland or the East Bay. We are talking about one of the most wealthy parts of America here, this team should not be operating like it is a small market team and it used too be one of the great franchises in all of baseball during the Haas ownership. That glory can be returned with the right owner.

Now I want to go back to the component of stadium building and tie this to expansion fees. I know you have said before the fee for an expansion team could be up to two billion dollars. That might drive off some potentially great owners, especially if they are in a region that is not going to just hand out free dollars for building a ballpark. So what I am going to propose here is two new prongs in terms of how you think of expansion. First, lower the expansion fee to 650 million per owner, that way they can put a lot more of the resources they have as an ownership into building the actual stadium. Then, if the league wants to collect four billion in expansion fees, simply expand to 36 teams rather than 32. If you expanded to 36 and charged 650 million for each team, the league gets nearly the four billion it would have received from just a pair of teams at two billion each. That four billion divided by the existing owners comes out to more than 130 million per owner, or if part of the cut was taken by the league, each existing team of the 30 could get 130 million and the league central fund pulls in 100 million of its own.

Some will say expansion to 36 is too much, but you have said you want to operate baseball like a growth business. In 1969, the league expanded from 20 to 24, an increase of 20 percent. A growth from 30 to 36 would also be an increase of 20 percent. I would propose that the timeline and mechanics for expansion work like this. Award the six teams in 2025 or 2026, to begin play in either 2028 or 2029. The six teams would allow for the league to maintain a three division per league alignment with six teams in each of six divisions. You can maintain the everyone plays everyone approach, scheduling 54 interleague games against 18 opponents. Teams would still alternate sites each year, but the home and away in the same season between designated rivals would be canceled. Within the same league outside the division, all teams would face 12 opponents for six games each that gives you 72 more games on the schedule. This would leave you 36 games to play within the division. The division contests would then consist of seven games against four teams and eight against the fifth.

Given the high cost of expansion with fees and the cost of building a new stadium, this is not 1991 when the Rockies and Marlins had homes to move into or 1995 when the Rays did, all these teams would be in a situation like that faced by the Diamondbacks, you need to treat these teams the way the NHL did the expansion Golden Knights. IN the two drafts prior too their first season, give the expansion teams the top six draft positions, the year the franchises begin play they would be in a lottery with the remaining franchises. IN terms of an actual expansion draft, the existing teams would be able to protect nine players from the first round of selections, two primary starting pitchers and two primary relief pitchers, one catcher, one 1b/dh, one player who played infield other than first base, one outfielder and one utility player who plays a variety of positions. Teams would be able to then add four players to this list to protect prior to round two and five prior to round three. This means 90 players are selected, like in prior drafts, teams would lose three players from their organization. Rules about which recent amateur signings would be excluded could also be figured out.

I love baseball, I want to see it grow, but I want it done in a way that is sustainable and this means thinking differently when it comes to how the game operates, especially when relying on the use of public dollars. There are millions and millions of us who love baseball, but the men who own the teams are worth so much money now, in the view of many, they should be required to treat their team like an investment and if they have to take on the risk of building the stadium, they will hopefully in theory be a better and more invested owner than the man who operates the Athletics at this time. The league is in a box right now because of what has been done to the Athletics, I believe selling the team to a northern California group solves that issue, then the focus can be on how to expand in a way that gives the league a national foot print while showing that it respects the will of its hard working, tax paying fan base.

Have a good day and thank you for your time.

Reggie

Friday night, under the cover of darkness at 8:30 Pacific Daylight Time, far from the open government and required transparency preached by so many in government and especially on the Republican right, political leaders in Nevada snuck a stadium funding bill on to the floor of the Senate to try and approve public funding for a stadium that would bring the Athletics from Oakland to Vegas. Now mind you, as I have gotten older, on principle I oppose public funding for stadiums where the benefit goes to the billionaire team owner, talk about welfare kings. We don’t want to provide welfare for our children, provide better educational resources to the underserved poor and inner city kids who have no control over who they have for parents, but lets give 380 million to a man who has done nothing to better our society beyond lining his pocketbook so he can hang out with other conservative fat cats who love modern Trumpism?

Oakland for obvious reasons was not going to give massive public dollars to this owner or any other owner, nor should they or any other city. Robert D. Manfred, the corporate face of the league’s 30 owners, is a man who has made himself to look like nothing more than a feckless corporate spokesperson with the PR skills of a shrill elementary school student and the charisma of a great white shark. He has proven that his MLB is about nothing but money for the 30 billionaire owners who are mostly uncaring, unconcerned, and unphased by the damage they are doing to our society and the sport. I don’t refer to Manfred as the Commissioner of Baseball because the title commissioner is unbecoming of a man as clueless and tone deaf as Manfred. Manfred still believes that cities and states should contribute the bulk of the dollars used to build modern ballparks, to him, we as a society should say, hell no, you’ve got the wealth, you build it or get a loan from one of your billionaire friends to build it.

Manfred says Oakland has had difficulty getting a stadium for years, this is a true statement. But is all that difficulty on Oakland officials, no, the owner is as much to blame here. Certainly the fans are blameless here, after all, one of the basic tenants of economics is that if you as a business are trying to sell something that the buyers don’t find to be worth their dollars or time, eventually the seller goes out of business. But sports doesn’t operate like that, since the owners are part of a league, a cartel if you will where only a privileged few with access to wealth, resources and connections are given the ability to own and operate the franchises.

Where modern sports and baseball is the worst offender here have gone off the rails, is that the owners are not in sports to win, they are not in the sport to bring glory to the town that is home to their franchise. Many of them see it simply as a profit venture, where they as owners and the owners alone benefit from the money that is generated.

Let’s look at the Oakland situation specifically. Most teams that were bought in the early to middle 2000’s sold for any where from 150 to 300 million dollars, The Athletics were bought for 180 million, by Lou Wolff and John Fischer was part of his ownership group. So Fischer and the current ownership of the Athletics, even if they sold them for just 1 billion dollars today would have turned a profit just in the purchase and resale of more then 800 million dollars. You know what will be done with that money, nothing to better us as a society. Yet here’s the Oakland owner, wanting to demand that the public give him money to build a stadium and in Oakland, he wanted lots of money to go into this massive real estate venture that again would financially benefit one man, Mr. Fischer. If past and present history has taught you anything, know that the industries that have high rates of criminal behavior and white collar crime in particular include investing and real estate ventures.

Fischer is estimated by some sources quoted in recent stories to have a net worth of more than 2 billion. His franchise owns a massive piece of land in Oakland where his current ballpark sits, they could easily build a new, great venue on that site that would already have access to lots of necessary infrastructure, lowering the need for public financing. The league while opposed to private built parks like that in San Francisco, must realize that in many cities, going private is going to be the only way that they get what they want. City and state officials should only provide the cost for upgrades to utilities and other public systems such as water, electricity and communication on the ballpark sites, nothing more!

Now, as far as this blame game Manfred and the clueless corporate stooges at MLB want to play with Oakland fans. Here are the facts, Oakland like many teams not named the Cubs, Red Sox, Yankees or dodgers will see major drops in attendance, especially when the team is not as competitive. The Giants who never drew big crowds before they got a new ballpark, only kept drawing because the Giants were already competitive when they left Candlestick after the 1999 season, having won a division title in 1997 and played in a wild card playoff in 1998. San Francisco, which never drew less than 35K per night during a brief down turn in the 2007-2009 period, is drawing only 28K per night this year, and that is in part due to fan dissatisfaction with choices made by management.

The Athletics for their part when they were great from 1988-1992 had 28K per night in 1988 and were 30K or higher from 1989-1992. Oakland attendance would be hit hard like many teams after the strike, in the 14-16K range from 1995-1998. But the Athletics began to get good again, signs of a growing talent and a competitive 1999 squad increased attendance and from 2002-2004, the team got 27K per night. Another dip came when the team had a downturn from 2008-2011, but attendance was well over 20K for the next run of success from 2012-2014 and it did not fall under 18K, rebounding to 20K in 2019 when the team had a second strait wild card berth and won well over 90 games. No doubt had fans been allowed to attend games in 2020, the story would have been similar, but covid cost all owners, not just the Athletics. What did Oakland ownership do in 2021 to welcome fans back, jack up prices and say to the fans, hey we want to leave for Vegas. The Athletics would get just 12K per date where they had full capacity in 2021 with a team that was still good, the drop was all caused by the actions of the owner. The number would be slightly under 10K in 2022 with a truly bad team and with an even worse team now because of the choices made by the owner, the attendance per night is under 9K. but go on to baseball reference and look at the history of the Oakland attendance. You will see an absolute crater to 3K per night in 1979, when the owner was again flirting with all sorts of cities to move too. The team also won just 54 games and as I write this post, the team in 2023 has scored 2 or fewer runs in 8 strait games, matching a mark set by that 1979 squad. Oakland would have a major turn around winning 83 games in 1980 and the attendance went up to 10K. IN 1981, the team got out of the gate 20-3 and would get a playoff guarantee because of the split season format created by the strike. Athletics attendance in 1981 was 23K a night, they would be no worse than 15K per night in the middle 80’s before they got really good in 1988 and made Oakland the place to be in baseball.

Now, about the false hope that is Vegas. The Athletics owner keeps talking about a new park as the key to him being able to make his team good again. What utter bull hockey that is. If he goes to Vegas and gets the park he wants, he’s going to be in the smallest market of all baseball. He’s going to a place that like Miami and Tampa is full of transplants and tourists. How well are the marlins drawing at their retractable park, well the top 3 and 4 of the top 5 attendance seasons in marlins history are in the old outdoor park that was a shared football stadium, the only season they drew more than 25K in the new park, 27K to be exact was its first year in 2012, but because the Marlins owners continued to marlin, fans quickly stayed away. Counting the current attendance average for 2023 in Miami, the six worst attendance full seasons in Miami excluding the 2021 restrictions are 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2002, four of those of course being in the new ballpark that the public paid for in a very controversial way. What the Athletics owner is trying to do now in Vegas is exactly what went down in Miami but worse. At least when Miami got approved for its park in 2009, it had a winning season, its last winning full season. So the new park won’t bring the fans and keep them if the owner is not going to actually try to win games. Miami could have been a great market and with an owner like the Rays owner, it would have been.

Tampa Bay is the example of a good ownership, but fans who don’t care for the location, it remains to be seen if a Tampa based venue would help Rays attendance but having the best team in baseball still is not enough to convince most locals there to go to the game over in St. Petersburg. If the Rays owner ran the Athletics, we know what the attendance would look like. The Rays had just under 31K in their first year, in a venue that held nearly 42K. That was the obvious warning that it was a bad market to put a team in. For comparison, Miami had nearly 38K in its first year and dropped to nearly 33 in it’s second, Phoenix went from 44 to 39, Tampa from nearly 31 to 19, whereas Denver actually went up in year 2 before moving to a smaller venue and accordingly seeing a slight drop in their third year of 1995.

Vegas won’t work because not only is it a market of transplants and tourists, most people there are not going to go to Vegas for a game by a team they may have no interest in seeing play. Worse though, by going to Vegas, the owner gives himself guaranteed revenue sharing that he had lost for a time in Oakland and there is sub zero evidence he would invest the money in the team, which means there would be no players for local fans to become attached too. I predict Vegas attendance would be under 18K per night by the second year of the venue in that market, if it is ever built.

The final and perhaps biggest problem for Vegas though is that the baseball team if the athletics move in will be the third team to arrive and it will by far be the smallest market not only in baseball, but the smallest with three teams. Portland, Salt Lake City and San Antonio don’t have NFL teams and have well supported NBA teams that have been regularly competitive. Montreal of course works, it failed too not because of the fans, but ownership decisions and the history of how Montreal attendance fell off is very similar to what happened in Oakland, it began for good in 1998 in Montreal after they sold off Pedro Martinez for peanuts, then had the team purchased by another hated owner in baseball named Loria who would also eventually own, wait for it, the Marlins. Point being, we’ve seen this act before, we know what Loria was, we know what Fischer is, why would any city or political official choose to play ball with such sleaze. So when you factor the size of Vegas, look at the type of fan base Vegas has to draw from and look at the history of the ownership, there are your three strikes that calls Vegas out at home as a viable big league baseball market.

Baseball of course has a solution here. It can force Fischer to sell the team and if a local owner can’t be found who is willing to help privately build a new ballpark, then the team should go to an owner who can privately build a nice ballpark in any of the cities often mentioned for expansion. Frankly the same situation should apply to the Rays, though in this case, the owner is not the problem. Then once those situations are resolved, expand the league and demand that owners invest in their team and put a winning product on the field. The league of course could do this. It could demand that a team that has two strait seasons with 100 or more losses or any season with a loss total of more than 107 is automatically on probation, loses it’s first round draft pick and if it doesn’t improve by at least 10 wins, the owner must be forced to sell. Any team that loses 95 or more games for four or more consecutive years should also be held to such a standard. This will never happen of course, because the cartel has no desire to operate like a league with a product of integrity. Until the league has a true Commissioner, something we won’t see any time soon thanks to Bud Selig in 1992, baseball is going to be an utter joke that is undeserving of respect and is not worthy of one dime of public dollars that help to benefit private business interest.

I’ve been following baseball with much regularity since 1986 and that would include the beginning of every season since 1987. Do you remember where you were for the openers of the past? I do.

I would attend college at a local community college and Texas A&M, located in the same metro as Bryan High School, the district where I’d been in public school since moving their in 5th grade. So the 1987 to 1993 openers I would enjoy once getting back to the family home, missing some of the day games because of school and college classes in 1993. The 1994 to 1997 openers were while I was at A&M and while I would not catch every Rangers or Astros opener, I did catch every national opener as those were the first stand alone games on ESPN, including the very unpopular Cardinals at Reds on Sunday night April 3, 1994, the Dodgers at Marlins on Tuesday April 25, 1995 after the delay cause of the strike, and the white Sox at Mariners March 31, 1996. There would be no Sunday opener in 1997 or 1998.

The day of the 1998 openers on march 31, I was traveling with a friend from Corpus Christi to Austin where I now lived with my family. The 1999 openers I would enjoy back in College Station visiting friends.

Work would have me in Dallas much of the decade that followed. I was at work for the openers in 2000 and working an 11:30 to 8:30 schedule, I missed most games other than a couple late west coast contests. IN 2001, I took off Monday April 2 so I could enjoy baseball, though I was out of town visiting friends the prior weekend and missed the Sunday April 1 stand alone game between Texas and Toronto in San Juan.

Just before 2002 openers, I would lose my job due to a layoff, so I was home for those openers Sunday March 31 and Monday April 1. I’d be visiting a friend out of state in New Jersey when the 2003 season opened, this meant I got to hear the Mets and Yankees open their campaigns in the greater New York city metro.

Back at work, I’d miss the 2004 openers for the most part in the Dallas region again. After another layoff a year after starting the job I had at that time, I’d be visiting a friend in Victoria, Texas when the 2005 openers came and then I was visiting a friend in Fort worth when the 2006 and 2007 opener would come along. By early 2007, I knew long term I’d be in grad school and this would mean that the 2008 and 2009 openers would take place while I was in San Marcos, Texas. Due to the way my schedule and obligations worked, I missed much of the 2008 openers but enjoyed most of them in 2009. Life would then take me back to Dallas, the suburb of Irving where I would work for a community college. It was there where I was living for the 2010 and 2011 openers, missing most of the former due to work, the latter due to taking the day off to spend with my fiancé at the time, Lorna.

After getting married to Lorna and relocating to her home of Afton, Wyoming, that would be the place where I’d enjoy the 2012 openers and the stand alone game in 2013, Rangers at Astros. The first full opening day for the league, Lorna and I were taking a spring break get away down to Salt Lake city.

When 2014 came, we were relocating to Texas, I was already in Beaumont with a job at Lamar University and Lorna would join me that summer. When the 2014 season began, she was actually visiting me and she had spent the first two days of the season with me, so most of my focus was naturally on Lorna. We would still be in Beaumont for the 2015 through 2018 openers. While I did not take the day off in 2015, I would do so intentionally in 2016 through 2017, I took a sick day in 2018 as I had originally planned to go into work. In the summer of 2018, we both took jobs in the Austin metro area, I would be at work for the openers of 2019 in San Marcos, working at the same university I attended for grad school. With me being moved to a mostly remote job situation during the first years of Covid, I would be home for the delayed 2020 start in July and for the April 1, 2021 opener, but I was on the work clock. I would take the days off to enjoy the rescheduled 2022 openers on April 7-8, which meant the last three years were spent in Austin on opening day. This coming opener I’ll also be in Austin, but I’ll be with my wife at her elementary school doing presentations. I’ve already made it known that no matter what, I am taking opening day off in 2024, which will be the first actual opener I’ve planned for well in advance since 2017.

I am never one who would be called a traditionalist in that I’m open to new ideas and ways of doing things. Doing something just because that is how it has always been done in my view is a horrible way of thinking, not to mention it is used as cover for bad behavior and shows an unwillingness to adapt to new ideas and logic.

When it comes to baseball, a sport wrapped deeply in tradition, one thing that has bent back and forth in various ways is the schedule. Clearly the quality of the game action on the field has not improved with those four extra off days the players obtained starting in 2018 and I seriously doubt those four days off that added time to the schedule calendar will ever be taken back to what they used to be.

So with that out of the way, I ask myself, what’s the better type of baseball schedule. We’ve had seasons that were scheduled to purposely begin on Thursday or Friday during a period of time through out most of the 1970’s through 1981, then again in 2011 and 2012, before becoming a new feature of the expanded baseball calendar starting in 2018. The season did not always close on a Sunday either, in fact there were a few seasons in the 1970s where the final day of the season was a Wednesday or Thursday and not all teams played their final game on the final day. Since at least 1977, every season was intentionally scheduled to end on a Sunday, accept the 2011 and 2012 seasons which ended on Wednesday, the 2011 final day being one of the most memorable in baseball history. WE had two other Wednesday endings that were not on the original card, both a result of lockouts that required rescheduling of games and a final day of play on a Wednesday in both 1990 and 2022.

this year we are back to what we have known from 2018, 2019 and 2021, everyone scheduled to open play on a Thursday, followed by a very light Friday card and frankly something I’ve never liked, then games over the first weekend. The final Sunday where everyone plays at the same time is always fun and is a feature I have always liked. It wasn’t quite the same with everyone playing Wednesday afternoon games on the final day, a time that just doesn’t work for a lot of working fans. The final Sunday though has a different problem, in that it is up against the NFL and baseball’s final day of the regular season gets shoved to secondary status. So if I were MLB starting in 2024, this is what I’d do.

First, let’s keep the everyone opens on the same day theme going, but let’s open on Sunday. This gives many fans the chance to attend an opening day, with bunches of afternoon games. You can showcase three games much as you did in 2016 and 2017 when just three national games were shown. The Sunday night game can feature the World Series champ from the prior season in its scheduled opener. Teams can then play some combination of days Monday through Wednesday with many teams in colder outdoor climates having that Monday as the built in off day in case the Sunday opener is impacted by weather. This then allows you to go back to the old schedule where your first Friday card is a full card, with a combination of home openers for teams who were on the road earlier in the week and other teams continuing their season opening home stand, with remaining teams getting their home opener the following week. Never again should we have a Friday where more than half of the teams are not scheduled and in the current system, the first Friday is very short for games scheduled and the second Friday is also limited.

This naturally means that the final day of the season will be on Wednesday. So what to do, schedule everyone to play at the same time as you always do, but start the games when fans can actually attend, so make those starts 7:45 in the Eastern time zone and 4:45 in the Pacific.

Any needed makeup games would be played on Thursday, with the wild card series in one league scheduled Friday to Sunday, the other Saturday to Monday.

Using 2024, here is how such a schedule would then work. The regular season opens Sunday March 31 league wide, final exhibitions are Friday night March 29. The regular season ends Wednesday October 2 with any needed makeup games Thursday October 3. The AL wild card series are Friday October 4 to Sunday October 6, the NL Saturday October 5 to Monday October 7. The two ALDS matchups are Tuesday and Wednesday October 8-9 at the teams with better records, Friday and Saturday October 11-12 at the lower seed and the final and deciding fifth game if needed would be Sunday October 13 with no travel day. The NLDS would be a day later, with games Wednesday and Thursday October 9-10 and Saturday through Monday October 12-14 with no travel day for game 5.

The ALCS would maintain the two open dates we have been normally used too, with a schedule of games for Tuesday and Wednesday October 15-16, Friday through Sunday October 18-20 and Tuesday and Wednesday October 22-23. The NLCs would be a day later, Wednesday and Thursday October 16-17, Saturday through Monday October 19-21, then Wednesday and Thursday October 23-24. The World Series would open with games Saturday and Sunday October 26-27, then play Tuesday through Thursday October 29-31, and then Saturday and Sunday November 2-3.

In baseball history, we have had a World Series game 7 set for as late as November 6, but we have also had regular seasons now open as early as March 28 and scheduled for as early as March 26 back in 2020. Thinking of this then, we know the 2025 season would open Sunday March 30 and close with a 7th World Series game on Sunday November 2 using this approach. In 2026, those dates would be March 29 and November 1, moving to March 28 and October 31 in 2027. The 2028 season is where a choice would have to be made, move even earlier and have a March 26 open and a final date of October 29, or push forward to an April 2 open and a final date of November 5 in the world Series. I think 2029 would certainly push forward if it was not already done so in 2028, as your dates would be April 1 and November 4, then 2030 would repeat the 2024 schedule dates listed above of March 31-November 3, 2031 would repeat 2025 at March 30-November 2, 2032 would repeat 2027 at March 28-October 31, then 2033 would be March 27-October 30, assuming nothing is changed in the scheduling philosophy around either the regular or post seasons up to that time.

It should also be said that outside years where there is no WBC, spring training games should start a bit later than they currently do. Through the late 1990’s, teams would play their first exhibitions about 29 or 30 days before the regular season began. So under my new formula, the exhibition schedule for all teams would begin on Thursday February 29 in 2024, then move to February 27 in 2025 and February 26 in 2026. Teams would get five additional days in WBC years, so the 2027 opening would be Saturday February 20, then in 2028 if we have the early March 26 opening your exhibition play begins Thursday February 24 or if the later opening of April 2 was chosen, then that exhibition opener moves to Thursday March 2. Exhibition openers would be March 1 in 2029, February 28 in 2030, February 22 in 2031 to accommodate another WBC, then move to February 26 in 2032 and February 24 in 2033.

I don’t know about you, but I know I am very much looking forward to the new 2023 balanced schedule where every team in MLB faces every other team. The schedule in a 30-team alignment actually works very well. There are ways this approach works when the league eventually expands to 32 and it can even work with expansion to 36. Below, I outline how this would be most likely done.

If MLB goes to a 32 team schedule, we almost certainly have four divisions of four teams in each of the two leagues, though two divisions of eight is possible given that now only the top two teams in each league avoid the wild card round.

Assuming the current model is kept in place, here is how the schedule and alignment combinations work.

With the new playoff system when the league grows to 32, I personally favor returning to a two division alignment. Under that approach, here’s what we would most likely get.

If interleague play is to remain balanced, you would end up either removing the extra game against a built in rival, or you would need to deduct a game against one of the other teams. Lets assume that the approach is to just keep everyone playing the same number of games, which would increase interleague play from 46 to 48 games, three games against eight teams at home and the opposite on the road. This actually makes for a very easy scheduling procedure as you can now move those games to dedicated interleague blocks again as we had prior to the 15-15 alignment.

This leaves 114 games to play inside the same league. If you play 48 games, six against each of the eight teams outside the division, that leaves 66 division games against seven teams, which would result in a schedule of nine against four for 36 and ten against three for the remaining 30.

In a four division alignment, those 114 games divide this way, six against 12 teams out of division for 72 total, then 42 games within the division against three teams, 14 per opponent. My guess is that in terms of scheduling, this is much more likely what the league would prefer.

With a 36 team league, there are a couple of interesting approaches. If you kept three games against all teams in interleague, that gives you 54 games outside the league and 108 inside. If you kept six games against all teams outside the division, that takes 72 more and leaves 36 games against five teams within the division, which comes out to eight against one opponent and seven against four more. In terms of a schedule, that would be the easiest approach, short of going to the hockey model from the old days where everyone outside the division even within conference was played the same number of games. IN this approach, say all interleague remained at three games and the games against teams in the other divisions were cut to four, now you have a situation where division play grows to 60 total games which allows for 12 games against each team within the division. This approach would almost never happen as teams within the same league would want to play home and away, not rotating one site per years as will be done with interleague. What could happen here is that interleague play would be 44 games, three games against eight teams and two games against each of the remaining ten from the opposite league would be scheduled. If six games against each team outside the division was maintained for that total of 72, this now leaves 44 games for division play, which would give you eight games against one opponent and nine against each of the remaining four.

There is another interesting way you could approach the alignment, but this would also require new and major changes to how playoffs were organized. If you created a third league, call it the continental League, you could now have three leagues of 12 teams each. The alignment could be based on the year 1976 for the AL and the NL, though the Cubs and Cardinals would now be in the west where they didn’t want to be, the Reds and Braves would go east. The Brewers and Astros would stay in their current leagues rather than being flipped again.

The AL alignment would then be, Athletics, Angels, Rangers, Astros, Royals, and Twins west, White Sox, Red Sox, Guardians, Tigers, Orioles and Yankees east. The NL alignment, Giants, Dodgers, Padres, Cardinals, Cubs, Brewers west, Mets, Phillies, Nationals, Braves, Reds, Pirates east. As for the new CL, the Diamondbacks, Rockies and Mariners would join three new teams in the west, while the east would feature three more new teams and the Blue Jays, Rays and Marlins.

How the schedule would work, three games against each team from the other two leagues, that is 12 teams home and 12 road that then flip the next year. With those 72 games accounted for on the schedule, this leaves 90 games against the teams in your own league, playing 12 games against each of the five teams in your own division for 60 total games and five games against each of the six teams in the other division for a total of 30, which would be divided as three home two away against three and the opposite against three more, flipping the following year.

Now how do you arrange playoffs between these three groupings? The two division winners in each league and two wild cards would come out of the playoffs. All of the 12 teams in the post season tournament would be seeded 1-12 no matter the league they came from, with the two best teams getting the bye out of the wildcard playoffs. IN theory, this could result in two teams from the same league playing for a World Series, something that doesn’t matter anymore in my view since everyone has played everyone during the season and under the current formula now being used starting in 2023, we are guaranteed that the World Series opponents will have seen one another during the regular season. IN fact, since the introduction of interleague play, the teams who faced one another in the World Series met that same regular season in several prior instances, this past year when the Astros faced Philadelphia was just the most recent example. It had also taken place in 2014, with other notable examples from 2007, 2000 and 1999.

Since MLB added the four days to the schedule calendar, teams have always opened the Thursday before what would have been the traditional opening day on Monday accept the revised and shortened 2020 slate. We have yet to have everyone play on that day as there has always been at least one postponement.

I realize that with the new formula, MLB loves having that extra weekend of games as now 27 of the scheduled 52 series cover the typical weekend with nearly every series covering Friday through Sunday accept the rare two-game set that cuts one of those days out.

I would propose that MLB go back to the Monday opener and have the Sunday triple header which was a lot of fun when they did it in 2016 and 2017. Yes Monday openers at home are week day games, but unlike Thursday, Monday openers can be attended by fans who come in the weekend before and stay for the game before returning to work on Tuesday or Wednesday. The Thursday home openers are often followed by nothing on Friday and for a fan to get away for these mostly day games, now you are having to take three days off of work if you are coming from out of town and work a typical Monday-Friday schedule.

I would propose that the league do the following for its 2024 schedule.

Cut the exhibition schedule back to a month or so of games. Using 1996 as the model since it lines up perfectly with 2024, start the exhibition season with games for all on Friday March 1, you can have a few games on February 29 if you like. By the way, the 1996 exhibition campaign is the first I remember with February games, we have not had an exhibition season open in the actual month of March since 2016.

Have spring training games end for all teams on Saturday March 30, accept Friday March 29 for those who play in the Sunday tripleheader.

For the teams opening on Sunday March 31, they would play on Monday April 1 and Tuesday April 2, with Wednesday April 3 as an open or makeup date for lost games from Sunday, though that would not be needed if you are playing those Sunday games in Toronto, Houston, Tampa, Miami, Seattle, Milwaukee, Phoenix or Arlington and you are not likely to lose that date in southern California. All other teams would open on Monday April 1.

As for the end of the season, the final series are scheduled for September 30-October 2 with October 3 as makeup day for any missed games that had to be made up. The AL wildcard series run Friday October 4-Sunday October 6, the NL series a day later October 5-7. The two ALDS series go Tuesday October 8-Wednesday October 9 at the team with the better seed, Friday October 11-Saturday October 12 at the lower seed, and then no travel off day back to the opposite city for game 5 on Sunday October 13. The NLDS operates in the same way one day later with games October 9-10 and 12-14.

The ALCS then opens Tuesday October 15 with games October 15-16, October 18-20, and October 22-23 with game 7 on Wednesday October 23 at the higher seed. Again the NLCs goes a day later, with games October 16-17, 19-21 and 23-24.

The World Series would then open on Saturday October 26, those games would be October 26-27, 29-31 and November 2-3.

If the league keeps the schedule on the 2023 model, then the season would end Sunday September 29 as it did in 1996 with a Thursday March 28 open for all teams. If that sounds familiar, that would also mirror the schedule calendar of 2019. I would still propose not opening the exhibition schedule until February 29, it would be Saturday February 23 for most teams next year if the league keeps its current structure, which was also the case back in 2019.

AS for the playoffs, Monday September 30 would be makeup day, AL Wild Cards would be October 1-3, NL October 2-4. ALDS would run October 5-6 and 8-10, NLDS October 6-7 and 9-11. That would mean the ALDS would be Saturday-Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday, the NLDS Sunday-Monday and Wednesday-Friday. The ALCS would then be scheduled Saturday October 12-Sunday October 20 with games October 12-13, 15-17 and 19-20, the NLCS a day later with games October 14-15, 17-19 and 21-22. This means the World Series schedule would be October 23-31, with games Wednesday and Thursday October 23-24, then Saturday-Monday October 26-28 and Wednesday-Thursday October 30-31.

The other alternative if you wanted the series to end earlier, would be to start the regular season even earlier, taking my original proposal and moving thing up a week. Now you are looking at Spring training exhibitions starting about Friday February 23, the regular season starting Sunday March 24 and Monday March 25, with a Wednesday September 25 ending. The Wild Cards would be September 27-29 AL and 28-30 NL and now you have a post season schedule going forward that would very much look like 1996. ALDS October 1-2 and 4-6, NLDS October 3-4 and 5-7, ALCS October 8-9, 11-13 and 15-16, NLCS October 9-10, 12-14 and 16-17. The World Series would be October 19-20, 22-24, and 26-27.

The league could genuinely take this approach, playing the first week of games in mostly warmer climates and giving the teams in cooler climates like New York and Chicago each one scheduled series at home to reduce the risk of future makeup games. What you don’t want to do though is schedule every series for a warmer climate the first week, because if the weather goes bad in all your cooler climate cities the second week, now you have a rash of makeups, this was what burned the league with its 1997 schedule.

Baseball for me is fun for so many reasons, including how we can connect, compare and contrast the past and present players of the game.

One fun exercise for me, as my wife says everything ties back to baseball, is to look back at games that were being played on past days. So here is something I’d like to propose to MLB. Pick one time on the calendar from a past season and use those exact games on the schedule for the dates in question. One way you can easily do that is to just pick dates from past seasons where the calendar lines up with the same dates. The 2024 calendar for instance matches up with past days in the 30-team era from the 2019, 2013 and 2002 seasons, as well as 1996 from the 28-team era and 1991 and 1985 from the 26-team era. So for fun, I’m going to propose some past dates that should be rerun on future schedules. I’ll do this for the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

For the year 2024, the dates I have chosen are Sunday July 21, 1996 and Wednesday June 5, 2002.

The 1996 date was the meeting of a dear friend through a church event who I have remained in contact with to this day. The 2002 date was my only chance to see the former Expos play in Montreal. For this exercise, Expos scheduled games obviously now belong to the Nationals and in 1996 since the Rays and Diamondbacks didn’t yet exist in the majors, they will play one another.

Series that will be played and ending on Wednesday June 5 or Thursday June 6, 2024

Rangers at Angels

Diamondbacks at Astros

Mets at Braves

Royals at white Sox

Red Sox at tigers

Dodgers at Rockies

Cubs at Brewers

Guardians at Twins

Pirates at Nationals

Orioles at Yankees

Mariners at Athletics

Marlins at Phillies

Giants at Padres

Rays at Blue Jays

Cardinals at Reds

Note that here, the Astros are the only interleague matchups since in 2002 they were an NL team with Arizona. Also since the Diamondbacks host Houston in 2023, this will be a series at the Astros even though Arizona was the host on this date in 2002.

For the July 21, 1996 schedule, we have three interleague matchups, because the Brewers then were facing an American League team, plus the afore mentioned Houston situation and the Arizona against Tampa arrangement which in 2024 goes to Tampa.

Games based off the Sunday July 21, 1996 schedule.

Diamondbacks at Rays

Orioles at Red sox

Mariners at Angels

Royals at white Sox

Twins at guardians

Phillies at marlins

Braves at Astros

Nationals at Mets

Yankees at Brewers

Reds at Pirates

Rockies at padres

Athletics at Rangers

Dodgers at Giants

Cubs at Cardinals

Tigers at blue jays

Note that here, the other two interleague matchups besides the created matchup between the two 1998 expansion teams do work as scheduled in 1996, because Milwaukee visits the yankees in September on the 2023 schedule and Houston does likewise at Atlanta in April.

For 2025, I could go several directions from 1997, the day interleague baseball was first played, the day I graduated college that August, the day the Astros won the division for the first time in 11 years. Ultimately I went with the first day of interleague play given its significance. From the 2003 schedule I selected the date my wifes niece was born, and from 2008, I chose the date I finished cancer treatment.

From June 13, 1997, yes it was Friday the 13th that day, we had 14 interleague matchups. Of course now the Brewers and Astros have switched leagues, so in effect this means we have 13 interleague series on the schedule and one within each league for the date. Also some of the locations of the interleague games will have to be governed by who’s turn it is to play host in 2025.

With all that out of the way, the Friday June 13 schedule is this.

Rays at Diamondbacks

Brewers at Cubs

Twins at Astros

Angels at padres

Rangers at Giants

Athletics at Dodgers

Rockies at Mariners

Blue jays at Phillies

Cardinals at Guardians

Pirates at Royals

White Sox at Reds

Tigers at Nationals

Mets at Red Sox

Yankees at marlins

Orioles at Braves

Now for all the notes here, note right away that in 2025 the location of Rays and Diamondbacks moves back to Arizona like in 2023. On the 2025 schedule because of the interleague rotations, the following series from 1997 are being played at the opposite site from the 1997 game, Angels and Padres, Rangers and Giants, Athletics and Dodgers, Cardinals and guardians, Pirates and Royals, as well as Mets and Red Sox.

In honor of our niece, Saturday July 5 is based off the games for that exact date in 2003, which are below, only the Astros will be in an interleague pairing with Pittsburgh and in this case, the location will match 2003.

Nationals at Braves

Blue jays at Orioles

Cardinals at Cubs

Mets at Reds

Tigers at Royals

Diamondbacks at dodgers

Rockies at Brewers

Guardians at Twins

Marlins at Phillies

Red Sox at Yankees

Angels at Athletics

Astros at Pirates

Giants at Padres

Mariners at Rangers

White Sox at Rays

Finally, I pick Friday August 15 from 2008, this was the date I returned home from radiation treatments. Again Houston will be the only interleague team paired up this time with Arizona and this will be another flip, this time to Phoenix.

Giants at Braves

Cardinals at Reds

Angels at guardians

Orioles at Tigers

Cubs at marlins

Brewers at Dodgers

Astros at Diamondbacks

Mariners at Twins

Royals at yankees

White Sox at Athletics

Mets at Pirates

Phillies at Padres

Rockies at nationals

Rays at Rangers

ON a pair of spring nights in 1986, I would stumble on to the AM radio broadcast of two exciting baseball games that had fun finishes, both walk offs. Is it much to make a big deal out of one game or two, as us baseball lifers know, not really. But imagine that this exciting game before Memorial Day is the first time or perhaps a time within just a few attempts, that some young kid at age 10, 12, 14 has been introduced to the game via radio, TV or even better, live action. That fun experience can hook someone as it would me.

IN 1983 at age 10, my love as was the case in my family was football and specifically the Dallas Cowboys. Over the next couple years, I’d find occasions to enjoy other NFL games that involved teams other than Dallas or the Houston Oilers, but the cowboys were always priority.

It was after the NFL season ended in January 1986 that I had began to discover other sports, basketball would come first, Rockets, Mavericks and Spurs games living where I did in the Bryan college Station area of Texas. Then a couple of brief discoveries of hockey thanks to AM radio and the Chicago Blackhawks right at the end of the 1985-86 regular season. But it would end up being that discovery of baseball in the final inning of two games that planted the seed.

IN 1986, the Rangers and Astros were both anything but expected contenders, some publications said Houston would lose 100 games in 1986, the Rangers were expected to have a third strait season of more than 90 losses.

Instead, each team would be contending all summer. The Astros got off to a hot start in ’86 and on the third weekend of the season, the Astrodome began to rock like it had not done much of in recent baseball history for the home town nine. On Saturday April 26, Houston beat the Reds 1-0, scoring the winning run in the bottom of the 9th on a passed ball with two out and runners on the corners. Houston moved into 1st place at 12-5, they would be no more than a two games out following the conclusion of play on Thursday July 17 when they lost the opening game of a series to the Mets, Houston would take the next three and never look back in that division race.

The other game would be four weeks later, Saturday night May 23, the Rangers were down at a run to the Red Sox when Bobby Jones hit a ground ball in the hole between first and second, two runs would score on the play putting Texas in 1st. The Rangers would fall out of the top spot for good in the middle of June, but they were within range of the angels all summer until a difficult stretch in late August. Texas would f finish a surprising 2nd that year.

When the World Series was over, I would return to following football and continuing to learn more about hockey and basketball that winter, but I could not wait for baseball’s return. It would be the weeks in January and February of 1987 when I found myself counting down the days to the first games of the exhibition season, and then as March turned to April, counting down the days to the opening of that regular season.

When you remember things, there are things that always stand out about the first time. I will always remember following the exhibition games with great excitement and interest with nothing but CNN, ESPN and AM radio in 1987. In 1993 it was learning about the two new expansion teams that were the Marlins and Rockies. But I especially enjoyed the start of 1996 when for the first time since 1993, we had a normal baseball season that would not be interrupted or marred by labor unrest.

The 1997 season was going to be fun because of interleague play for the first time, 1998 brought two more expansion teams with the Diamondbacks and Rays. My love for baseball would remain and continue on.

I remember enjoying the beginning of the 2002 season and hoping it would turn out OK after what had been done to baseball and the nation on 9-11 the year before, but there was also another looming labor stoppage and talk of contraction. When we came out whole following the 2002 season, the baseball fan in me felt great hope for what was ahead. A new labor deal had been reached, no franchises were going to be dissolved and there was much to look forward to in 2003.

When I returned to graduate school in 2007, we would experience one of the great season endings with the run that the Colorado Rockies would go on and I could not wait for 2008. After going through a cancer scare and treatment in 2008, I truly was looking forward to 2009. All along, I still loved baseball and enjoyed every moment that I could. This would continue on into the years of my life as a married man starting in 2011. But baseball like life in so many ways has not seemed quite so easy the last few years. Between the raging pandemic we are still living with and more labor troubles, nothing felt quite right about 2020, 2021 or 2022. So we come to January 2023 and I am again finding that excitement that I felt about what one hopes is a great uninterrupted season ahead, like I felt in 1987, 1993 and 1996, like I felt in 2003, 2008, and in those years before 2020. I’m looking forward to the new schedule format where everyone plays everyone, I was never a fan of the division heavy schedule MLB had from 2001 to 2022. I’m looking forward to notice what the game will look and feel like with the rule changes, the shift restrictions won’t do much but the pitch clock sure will!

The whole point to this little piece of writing is this fans, I’ve always loved baseball and even though it has done things that frustrate us as fans, I still at the heart of the matter enjoy the game and you can too. You can still go to a game if you can afford it, but in many years before 2000 I only went to one live game, it was radio and TV for me. Even now, I’m lucky if I get to maybe between two and four games a year. The internet and access to the live radio broadcast online is something I truly appreciate and make use of to keep up with the game and thanks to the internet, you can quickly and easily view the box score of every game played from the night before or 20 years before.

So my message fans, if you have felt a bit of a disconnect from the game the last few years, let yourself discover baseball again. Listen to a game on radio, watch on TV, find a good Podcast to listen too that is baseball oriented, there are many great ones out there including Effectively wild from Fangraphs, Baseball Tonight by ESPN, the league and team oriented locked on podcasts, plus content from Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and The Athletic that you can easily find on your favorite podcast application.

If you live some where far away from your favorite team, there are multiple mobile apps that you can use to listen to games. TuneIn subscribers can get every MLB game, users of Sirius-XM radio can also use their mobile platform to listen to game broadcasts and MLB has its own service that you can subscribe too via its MLB app on Apple and Android platforms, this also gives you access to listen via your computer using your MLB account. One really nice feature of the MLB audio service that the league operates is the broadcast archive, so if you missed a game and wanted to listen later, you have that option as well.

Today on January 14, we find ourselves a month away from the days teams will be preparing to have catchers and pitchers report in Florida and Arizona. IN 41 days, the Mariners and Padres will play an exhibition against one another, as will the Royals and Rangers. Everyone else is scheduled to play their first exhibitions exactly six weeks from today on February 25. If you are still new to baseball, get to know the players on the rosters of the other teams around the league. The major sports sites have dedicated baseball pages, www.ESPN.com/mlb, www.FOXSports.com/MLB and www.cbssports.com/mlb have dedicated information pages for every team and there are great resources available through sites like http://www.FanGraphs.com, http://www.BaseballProspectus.com and http://www.BaseballAmerica.com, not to mention the MLB website. Want to learn more about who some of the highly thought of prospects are in the sport, Fan Graphs and Baseball Prospectus provide content here too, though my preferred favorites would be Baseball America, ESPN and the MLB operated www.mlb.com/pipeline which is very content rich.

Also do know that for other live or replays of baseball discussion, you can check out the MLB network on your favorite cable or satellite provider, SiriusXM also features a dedicated MLB channel called MLB home plate with lots of features and baseball discussion year round.

So now that I’ve given you some things to do on what may be a cold wet weekend for many and with quite a few of us looking forward to a work holiday on Monday in honor of M.L.K., go ahead and discover more about baseball. Do like me and get ready for the 2023 season which will be a season quite like no other in some ways.

MLB returns to its most balanced schedule since 1998 and in the interleague era, its most fair schedule ever.

MLB scheduling has always been part art and part science, but never was the method of how games were to be scheduled more confusing than it was during the period of 1999-2012 in MLB.

First, remember that before the second round of expansion in 1969, the two leagues always played the same type of balanced schedule and for much of history in the modern era since the leagues went to 154 games and eventually 162, the math was simple. Every team in the American League was scheduled for 22 games against each opposing club during the 154 game era through 1960 and when the league expanded to 10 teams and 162 games, the number was 18 per opponent from 1961-1968. The exact story was also true for the National League, accept that it expanded and modified its schedule a year later in 1962.

We did not know the concept of an unbalanced schedule until 1969, when both leagues expanded to 12 and introduced divisional play with a pair of six-team divisions. Now the 18 games per opponent remained against the five teams inside your own division, against the other half of the circuit, total games played per team would decrease to 12. This would remain the model used in the NL through 1992, before the league expanded to 14 teams in 1993 with the addition of the marlins and Rockies.

Over in the AL, the model remained until it expanded in 1977 with the Blue jays and Mariners. The first two years as a 14-team circuit, the AL decided to keep the 90-72 ratio of division to interdivision games. With an odd number of teams in each division, this made scheduling more of a challenge. All teams inside the division were played 15 games, while against the other division, 10 games were played against five teams and 11 against two more.

The AL would go to a less complicated and truly balanced schedule again in 1979 where 13 games were played against the six teams within the division, 12 games would be played against each of the seven teams outside the division, which meant for the first time, fewer than half of the games were played within the division at 78-84. This would be the exact same approach taken by the NL later in 1993, though it had considered other options including one extreme approach that would have scheduled 20 divisional games against each of six teams and just six games against each of the seven teams on the other end of the circuit. This though would have created more scheduling difficulty.

When the league switched to the three division model we know now in 1994, the original schedule which was already nearing completion for that season would keep the approach used in 1993, so this meant the Braves moving from the NL West to NL East would play 13 games against teams outside their division in 1994 from the entire NL West and the Reds and Astros inside the newly created NL Central, while all their NL East opposition would be played 12 games each. The schedule that was drawn up before modifications due to the continuing strike in 1995 and the completed 1996 schedule would remain balanced, with teams playing 13 games against everyone in their divisions. Teams in the smaller western divisions of each circuit played three teams outside their divisions for the extra 13th game, teams in the larger central and eastern divisions would play two such teams outside the division for the extra game.

When interleague play was introduced in 1997, the approach was strait forward, simple and lacked any creativity. Teams would only face teams from the corresponding division in the other league and the reduction against the original league championship schedule was uniform across the board. All teams inside their own divisions faced one another 12 times and they played 11 games against every team in their own league outside the division. This approach meant that teams in the larger central and eastern divisions played 147 league games, the teams out west played 146. The corresponding interleague schedule then found the two central divisions playing 15 games with American League teams hosting three of the five series as every team faced one another in one set of games home or road. The opposite arrangement with the NL hosting the extra series took place in the eastern divisions and to offset this, games between the divisions during the regular season found central divisions hosting the extra game in four of five matchups against eastern teams in the NL, the opposite was true with eastern teams doing so against the central teams in the AL. In the two western divisions, the 16 interleague games were handled differently, as everyone played everyone both home and away in a block of two-game series.

When MLB expanded in 1998, at the time the league argued against interleague play at all times of the season, which was the reason given for going with a 16-14 alignment. The diamondbacks would join the NL, the then Devil Rays the AL and the Brewers would switch leagues going to the NL. The AL would thus remain a 14-team circuit, Detroit would switch from the eastern to the central division to take the place vacated by Milwaukee, Tampa Bay taking Detroit’s place in the eastern division.

The AL schedule in 1998 would thus be a repeat of 1997, accept now to accommodate the NL, 6 blocks of interleague games would be played, four at three games and a pair at two games scheduled over four days.

All of the western teams faced one another, which meant that one NL team would be left out. The same was true in the central divisions. So every time interleague play happened in 1998, the one NL series on the schedule of leftover teams was always a west/central matchup. This of course meant that someone from the west would have to be skipped over twice. That someone would end up being the Rockies. But the 1998 schedule was otherwise very strait forward. All teams within a division played one another 12 times. All teams played 16 interleague games. For the teams in the AL West, this meant that 11 games were played against everyone outside the division. For teams in the AL Central and East, since they had an extra divisional opponent, it meant that they had to drop one game from their schedule of games outside the division, so the obvious choice here that the league took was to drop one game against a corresponding team from the opposite of the two larger divisions. This meant that the White sox and Toronto only played 10 games in 1998, they played everyone else 11, the Royals and Yankees were another example.

The story in the NL is more confusing. Lets start with the NL East, which saw all its teams play the 16 interleague games against the five counterpart teams from the AL. this was done as four teams three games each and a fifth at four games in a two home and two away arrangement. They played 12 games against each team in their division, nine against each of the six teams in the NL Central, and nine against all but one team in the NL West, with that remaining team being scheduled for eight contests.

In the NL West, each team was outside the interleague rotation for a single three game series, accept the Rockies who were passed over in a pair of two game series, which meant that everyone other then the Rockies played 13 games against the AL, Colorado had 12. Since all NL West teams played 12 games against one another, this meant that the additional games would have to come against the NL Central. So while the Giants, Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks played nine games against five teams in the NL Central and 12 against one other, the Rockies would play nine games against four and 11 against two others.

Within the NL Central itself, the teams that played the Rockies were Houston and Milwaukee, so this meant that those two teams played 14 games of interleague, everyone else played 13. As a result, they each played only one divisional opponent 12 games, all others were 11 games, including against one another. The remaining four teams in the division would played two teams for 12 games and the remaining three for 11.

Why do I call the 1998 schedule the last one that was the most balanced, well the answer is simple and complicated. MLB would maintain the structure of the schedule used in 1998 for another two seasons and in both seasons the same rotation of skipped interleague teams would be used. But interleague play increased from 16 to 18 games, so now all teams in the AL East played NL East teams 18 total games, AL Central teams did the same against the NL Central and the AL West against the NL west. NL East teams thus also played 18 games, NL Central teams played 15 as one team missed each rotation, NL West teams played 15 accept the Rockies who played just 12 being the double skip team. What was more unpredictable was the balance of games inside the leagues. IN the AL, division play could be 12 or 13 games and there was no real pattern that I could pick up on. The league went away from the 11 games outside the division, to various combinations of mostly 10 or 12, though a few nine game combinations were also used.

IN the NL it was even more confusing, division play could be 12 or 13, with a lot of nine game matchups outside divisions, with a few instances of eight or seven games also scheduled. so in terms of a balanced schedule inside the league, 1998 was more so than 1999 or 2000, before the unbalanced schedule came in 2001.

Scheduling from 2001 to 2012 was very difficult to figure out, because of the different sizes of the divisions, the now required Astros Rangers scheduling that did not cut across corresponding geographic divisions unlike other rivalries, and the remaining cap of interleague games at 18. IN most years, the skipped team was still a west/central grouping, but there were a few times where this was not so and the first time we saw it was in 2002. That year, the larger NL Central and smaller AL West were paired for the first time, so every skipped turn would result in a matchup of teams within that division.

In 2003, the smaller AL West with four teams faced the NL East, the larger NL Central with six faced the AL East, while the NL West and AL Central of same size were paired. For the first time, we saw an NL skip series that was Pittsburgh and Atlanta when play between the two leagues began on June 6, marking the first time a team from the NL East would miss a turn in interleague play.

Since 2013 excluding the reduced and modified 2020 pandemic shortened schedule, the schedule has been balanced in its unbalanced approach. So what changes now is that much of the extra divisional heavy focus is transferred to interleague play. Interleague play which had increase to 20 games in 2013 now jumps by 26 games to 46 in 2023, while divisional play is reduced by 24 games from 76 to 52 and interdivisional play within the same league is cut by just two games from 66 to 64. But now we have not only a truly balanced schedule within the league, but a completely fair schedule too as everyone plays the same interleague slate by facing, well everyone.

For the first time since 2000, divisional matchups will return to just two visits to each divisional rival, while for the first time in history, every team from the opposite league will appear in your home ballpark or on your home television. Radio listeners to a given team who don’t have cable or internet will also be exposed to every other opposition within both leagues during the same season!

Years ago as a kid, I once put together a schedule of games involving all the MLB teams, this was before expansion. Each team played just this one game, it was just something I did for fun prior to the season in 1987.

What if you then took those matchups and applied it to how you watched games in 2023, intentionally watching a game or a complete series between two teams and making it a point to view all 30 teams of the league? Here for you is a 2023 schedule that would allow you to do just that. I’m using the exact matchups I had created years ago. All of these are matchups of teams that are in different divisions accept the Braves and Phillies. Games are listed in order by 2023 schedule date of the selected series.

White Sox at Pirates, April 7-9

Tigers at Orioles, April 21-23

Athletics at Yankees, May 8-10

Dodgers at Cardinals, May 18-21

Padres at Nationals, May 23-25

Cubs at Angels, June 6-8

Mets at Astros, June 19-21

Brewers at Guardians, June 23-25

Rays at Diamondbacks, June 27-29

Rockies at Marlins, July 21-23

Mariners at Twins, July 24-26

Royals at Red Sox, August 7-10

Rangers at Giants, August 11-13

Blue Jays at Reds, August 18-20

Braves at Phillies, September 12-14.