Fixing interleague play

It's not very often that I give wide sweeping views of the game of baseball, but this interleague crap is so broken someone needs to fix it. Just look at this weekend in the NL East for example. It's another "Rivalry" weekend, so the Mets and Yankees are playing. The Braves, for no real reason, are playing the Orioles, the Phillies are playing the Red Sox, and the Nationals are playing the Blue Jays. All the games are in NL parks. The Marlins, meanwhile, have to go to Tampa Bay. So while four of the five teams in the division are forced to play teams with records above .500, the Marlins play the Devil Rays, on the road but still in-state. It's like baseball is saying "Here, Florida, make up three games in the division race." Let's not even talk about how teams like our Pirates get neglected during interleague play (a series with the Rockies instead of a big crowd drawing series with the Indians? On the road to Boston AND New York? ). An unbalanced schedule like this simply isn't fair. That's the last thing a sport that already has issues with fairness needs.

Interleague play really only exists anymore for one reason, the Yankees and the Mets. Hell, let's not lie to ourselves, that's the only reason it EVER existed. It's just that the novelty wore off for the rest of the league. Sure, the Pirates can turn the Orioles into 37,000 on a Wednesday night, but you're kidding yourself if you think baseball cares about that, and you're kidding yourself if you think it was anything but the dual bobblehead and the good baseball we were playing that brought in 37,000 that night (we barely broke 20,000 on Tuesday and we didn't break it on Monday with the O's in town, because no one cared the Orioles were here). Sure, baseball puts some other "natural rivalries" together, but Chicago doesn't care about Sox/Cubs, Ohio doesn't care about Indians/Reds, no one cares about Royals/Cardinals or Marlins/D-Rays, etc., etc.

The easiest solution is to fix two of baseball's biggest fairness problems with one fell swoop. First off, get rid of interleague play, now teams in each divion play the same schedules. That leaves maybe the most ridiculous situation in all of sports, the fact that the American League has 14 teams while the NL has 16. Honestly, this has to be a joke. There are three divisions in each league, yet somehow the NL Central has six teams while the East and West have five and the AL West has four teams while the Central and East have five. How can this be an even playing field for all the teams if the divisions and leagues aren't of equal size? This is, of course, because Bud Selig thought that National League baseball belonged in Milwaukee, then didn't bother to rebalance the leagues. So, without interleague play, the solution is simple. The Mets go to the AL East. If the only real motivation for interleague play is Yankees/Mets, put them in the same division. Have them play 20 times a year and battle for a division. Plus, the four huge spenders can be in the same division (Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Orioles) and we can all laugh hysterically when the Blue Jays win that division. So, that leaves the simple question of divisional balance. Move Tampa Bay to Las Vegas and put them in the AL West. Now the AL is fives across the board, and its weakest franchise (maybe baseball's weakest franchise) has been sold and moved. Now we just need to balance the NL. This is easy, really. We're in the Central Division, while teams that we would naturally be rivals with (the Phillies, the Braves, the ex-Expos, current Nationals) are in the East. Most of our division is in the Central Timezone, we're in the Eastern Timezone. We're further east than the Reds. We go to the NL East. Now every division has five teams. Now the leagues each have 15 teams. Now the Mets and Yankees can play 20 times a year. Does it fix everything? No, but it would be a step in the right direction.

UPDATE (8:11 PM): Reader JP brings up my shortsightedness in the comments (odd number of teams in each league) so the comments on this one are now required reading as well.