Separate Ways

I can't watch baseball (or anything, for that matter) on TV at home. We haven't gotten to a Sea Dogs game yet. Still, my summer so far has been spent on diamonds, playing kickball, coaching baseball, and following this potentially magical baseball season any way I can.

I'll dispense with the unpleasantness first. My Babe Ruth team is 1-14, in desperate need of a pitcher who can consistenly get batters out, a catcher who can occasionally throw a runner out, and a few outfielders who can catch a ball. I'm hoping to witness a win today, when we play the only team we've beaten this season (a game for which I was out of town). Playoffs start tomorrow, and I have a sneaking suspicion they'll end sometime around 8:00 tomorrow night.

In much more pleasant news, Rick is 21 won this Thursday, moving to 4-2-1 on the season and holding onto our tenuous grasp of fourth place. If we can win or tie this Thursday, we're likely to finish fourth out of twelve, good for a much-needed bye into the second week of playoff activity.

On a somewhat related note, interleague baseball wraps up today, and I won't miss it. Mismatches between high-octane American League lineups and untested National League pitchers aside, there are still so many reasons to get rid of interleague play. Schedules are horribly unbalanced, to the point where one team may cruise through all of its interleague games against sub-.500 teams, while a team in the same division may be tested by several better teams, then miss the playoffs by a game.

Most egregious, though, is the lack of a consistent designated hitter rule. I'm pro-DH, but even someone on the other side of the DH argument has to agree that it doesn't make sense to have two teams whose rosters are designed under different rules playing against each other. Case in point, with the Red Sox in San Diego this weekend, they'll sit Kevin Youkilis, Mike Lowell, and David Ortiz (arguably their three best hitters this season) for a game apiece, while three pitchers who haven't taken BP all season get to hack away against professional pitchers. Last night, the Sox put two on with no outs against the phenomenal Chris Young (their only scoring threat against him all game), only to watch Doug "Every Fifth Day" Mirabelli, Julio "Hitting .196" Lugo, and Tim "I Got a Few Hits With the '92 Pirates" Wakefield strike out in succession to end the inning.

National League baseball- it's like soccer, without the riots.