Chipper's got it right

This weekend marks the return of interleague play, which has been the Dave Kingman of baseball ideas. (For those of you who weren't around the game in the 1970s and 1980s, bear with me here.) It's either a strikeout or a home run.

The home run is seeing games such as Yankees-Mets and White Sox-Cubs, games that have civic meaning and stimulate interest in the game. The whiff is seeing Red Sox-Braves as a so-called "rivalry" matchup. Just because the Braves played in Boston 60 years ago shouldn't make it a rivalry that's played six times every summer.

And Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones nailed it on the head with a criticism of the current setup of interleague play: Why should the Braves and Mets play elite teams six times a year while the Marlins get away with playing the Devil Rays six times? If the division comes down to a swing of a couple of games, this isn't fair at all.

"If we're going to play the American League Central, everybody has to play all the teams in the American League Central," Jones told the Associated Press and other assembled reporters on Sunday. "This split-it-up and we have to play our rival in the American League East stuff, I don't get it. It's unfair for us and the Mets on a year-in, year-out basis to have to play the Yankees and Red Sox when other teams don't."

What would be fair? How about one series against your so-called natural rival, and the rest of the series are weighed in a similar way to how the NFL does it: First-place teams from 2006 play first-place teams in another division, second vs. second, and so on. It will act as an equalizer on the schedule, promoting parity, and will likely still create different matchups every year. (I know - it doesn't fit in the NL Central, which has six teams; and then the AL West has just four ... but maybe those "extra teams" play each other ... something can be worked out, I'm sure.)

Interleague play has also removed a lot of the novelty from the All-Star Game and the World Series. It's added to the game but diminished it at the same time. We have an appetite for it, but we should treat it like chocolate and pizza. Yeah, it tastes good, but a steady diet of it isn't healthy.