It’s been more than a week since MLB commissioner Rob Manfred dropped his latest bomb. Manfred, as we’ve learned, enjoys throwing ideas out into the universe to get his sport some easy pop while seeing how the masses will react. Just a few months back, he scrambled the brains of baseball fans with his idea of a “golden at bat”, which would allow a chosen player to come to the plate, once a game, when it wasn’t their turn to hit. Oh, he got his publicity alright: many of us took the bait. Was it a genuine, bona fide idea? Probably not. When MLB is serious about a rule change we tend to see it played out in the minor leagues, and last I heard, baseball lineups were still linear down on the farms.
Now Manfred, who has brought unprecedented change to on-field rules – the pitch clock, the shift ban, three batter reliever minimums, the ghost runner, just to name just a few – is back playing with the heads of the public, this time, floating plans to realign baseball’s 30 teams, who will be upped to 32 if the sport adds two more franchises through expansion, which the circuit is widely expected to do. Nashville, Salt Lake City, Raleigh and Portland are seen to be front runners, with Montreal looming as an outside shot. This could effectively end the league structure which has governed baseball since 1903, back when the upstart American League made peace with the senior National League and agreed to settle scores in a World Series rather than trying to run each other out of business.
Manfred’s latest idea led to a flurry of freak outs on the internet, and when everyone caught their breath, a wave of realignment ideas, some of which blew up the leagues entirely and some of which kept them mostly intact, flooded the zone. As a 50-year old baseball fan, my knee-jerk reaction was to side with Howie Rose, the cherished radio voice of the New York Mets.
“This is what I’ve been telling you is inevitable for quite a while now,” said Rose on X. “The American League (1901) and the National League (1876) will cease to exist as we know them. The last move before total destruction of the traditions that made baseball great.”
Over the week I took a breath, began to break it all down and began to change my tune. I asked myself, “how is it that these leagues, which came together as a result of brutal, turn of the 19th century commerce, can be responsible for the traditions that made baseball great?”
The more I thought about Rose’s claim, and the complaints of other fans citing “tradition” the more suspect it felt. Surely it’s the players, teams, games, drama, the physical on-field feats, the records, the stadiums, the hot dogs, peanuts and the Cracker Jacks rather than what team plays in what league that made us fall for baseball. We have some semi-recent evidence to support this. The Milwaukee Brewers once played in the AL West, the AL East and the AL Central before shifting to the NL Central for the 1998 season. The Houston Astros once played in the NL West and the NL Central before moving to the play in the AL West in 2013. Did those fanbases fall apart when these changes arrived? Hardly.
So upon such reflection, I’m going full Adam Curtis: those against dramatic realignment – and I am probably speaking mostly about fans over 35 here – are perhaps subconsciously, protecting the memories and stories of their childhood. That was when their love of baseball was formed, and there were significant differences between the AL and NL – from strike zone, to league presidents that actually had a say in the governing of the game – and All-Star games where folks really cared which league won. The further baseball gets away from that version of the sport, the more out of sorts and confused these older fans feel about the world they live in now. And they seem like the loudest online when it comes to this subject.
That’s probably a bit much for a baseball column, but really, that’s exactly why nostalgia is so powerful, because it ushers folks back into the comfortable world they know best. And really, such involuntary spasms are unwarranted, meaning the hours I spent panicking about the DH coming to the NL were actually a total waste: the universal DH is here and it’s fine!
This is in stark contrast to younger fans, who got into baseball right around the time the umpires and strike zones were all folded together, inter-league play was up and running, the central divisions and wildcard spots were introduced, league offices were history and winning the All-Star Game began to decline in importance to fans and players alike. Those fans are generally more open to change, with significantly less of an emotional attachment to the structures of an American and National League.
So, to the older traditionalists, and reactionary younger fans, if we say goodbye to the American and National Leagues, don’t fret. Welcome the potential of four, eight team divisions. A super division of the Red Sox, Phillies, Mets and the Yankees. That Seattle could finally have a semi-local team like Portland close by. That a rivalry such as Minnesota and Milwaukee rivalry could be revitalized. That cats and dogs can indeed live together! No, that’s not anything close to the baseball set up of my childhood, and no, this acceptance does not in any way serve as an endorsement of Manfred, who’s job is to try and scratch out as many pennies as he can for owners. But major changes to baseball’s structure are inevitable, and whatever they throw at us, as long as the game on the field is recognizable, and they keep that golden at-bat as far away from MLB as possible, I’m in.
