As the Red Sox find themselves in the middle of yet another interleague series, it's instructive to note that this year's expanded "game-a-day" schedule has sapped the historic popularity of the mixed league tilts. According to a careful analysis by
Maury Brown of the
Biz Of Baseball website,
interleague attendance through May 30th of this year (when adjusted for holiday and rivalry games) is below that of intraleague contests. The numbers are clear:
interleague games average 28,426;
intraleague games average 28,664. So, it's a wash. This, of course, driectly undercuts
Bud Selig's long-time propaganda campaign that suggests interleague is a "fan favorite". That may have been true when the games were rarer, but not anymore. All the more reason to tank the whole stupid idea and restore some added worth to the World Series.
