Brace yourself, Chicago baseball fans.
A bitter wind is howling from the north that could blow away Chicago’s status as one of baseball’s few national cities.
Every season since 1901, every major-league baseball team has passed through town for at least one series of games with the Cubs or White Sox. No other city can make this claim because New York was without an American League team in 1901-02 and without National League baseball from 1958 through 1961.
Chicago fans have marveled at the 1927 and 1961 New York Yankees, the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s.
During their careers, Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Johnny Bench and Mike Schmidt were annual visitors to Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park.
Since it rebuilt itself from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago has been a national crossroads for commerce, architecture and baseball. With fans from all sections of the country, Chicago’s full roster of visiting major-league teams was a terrific feature.
But no more.
Acting commissioner Bud Selig, who also owns the small-market Milwaukee Brewers, prefers to think regionally rather than nationally. He is pushing radical realignment of the National and American Leagues.
He wants to toss the White Sox and Cubs into the Central Division of the new “National League” along with Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis, Kansas City, Houston and Texas, a group with just two winning teams this season. The league’s Pacific Division would include Colorado, Arizona, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego and Seattle.
(Funny how the teams that have won 14 of the last 21 World Series are in the new “American League,” away from Selig’s Brewers).
These new NL clubs would make up the bulk of the Cubs’ and Sox’s schedule. Becasue interleague play would be limited, individual teams from the new AL would appear at Comiskey and Wrigley maybe only once every three to eight years, depending how schedules are drawn up. For the first time, the New York Yankees would not visit Chicago.
Instead of yearly appearances by the Yankees, Braves and Orioles, Chicago fans can look forward to extra games with the Twins, Brewers and Royals.
Sounds exciting.
From a marketing standpoint, how wise is it for the Cubs and Sox to offer local fans basically the same schedule? It is as if two traditionally different restaurants suddenly started offering the same menu.
The proposed Central Division would be reduced to baseball’s version of the Big Ten where regional rivalries outweigh national challenges. The Yankees would become Syracuse, the Braves Georgia Tech and the Orioles Virginia in terms of occasional visits.
Had Selig’s plan been installed years ago, the great players and teams mentioned earlier would have been strangers to Chicago fans.
“What was Babe Ruth like, Grandpa?”
“Well, Tommy, I hear he was a pretty good player. But he only came to Chicago once or twice when I was young, and I never got to see him.”
Now it could be Greg Maddux, Mo Vaughn, Bernie Williams, Roger Clemens, Barry Larkin, David Justice and Cal Ripken Jr. who would disappear from the Chicago baseball scene.
If the acting commissioner’s proposal is accepted, baseball should drop the labels American and National League because they will no longer apply.
A true American League means the fan in Boston has something in common with the fan in Seattle. A legitimate National League means the fan in Atlanta has something to share with the fan in San Francisco.
The so-called National Pastime deserves better than to have leagues organized by time zones.
Selig’s provincial plan is baseball’s answer to the Articles of Confederation, a locally oriented series of parochial measures that lacked the national vision of the U.S. Constitution.
Sure, baseball must compete with pro football and pro basketball for fan interest. But the American and National Conferences of the NFL have teams that span the nation and play each other on a regular basis. Season-ticket holders at any NBA arena know they can watch every other NBA team during the course of the regular season.
In another lifetime, when I was a New Yorker, I enjoyed seeing the San Francisco Giants of Willie Mays, the Los Angeles Dodgers of Sandy Koufax and the Oakland A’s of Reggie Jackson.
In another year, the New York baseball fan may no longer be so fortunate when it comes to watching Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey Jr.
In Ken Burns “Baseball” documentary, the soundtrack sometimes included the lovely Walter Neville song, “Hurrah for Our National Game.” If Burns does a sequel, he can substitute, “Hurrah for Our Regional Game.”
And for local baseball fans, Bud Selig will have turned Chicago into Milwaukee.
