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Lincicome: Rockies-Blue Jays: unnatural rivals

Published May 20, 2006 at midnight

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The relevance of interleague baseball to the Rockies is much the same as bathing is to a warthog, possibly interesting to watch but unnatural and of no benefit.

The Rockies have the distinction of being the next-to-worst National League team at it, with only the Pirates being poorer, but then the Rockies have had similar success against the usual rivals.

The Rockies' regular record and the interleague record are about as close as the fingers of a fielder's glove.

The same thing is true of attendance, which is the motor that drives this clunker of an idea. Interleague games average a couple of thousand more than regular league games, but not in places where the rivalries are forced.

What do the Rockies have in common with the Blue Jays, except that there are probably more actual blue jays in the Rockies than in Toronto?

And, by the way, this is not even a novelty since the two teams have done this all before, if the Rockies had to go to Canada to do it.

How the Rockies do against Toronto now and Oakland, Texas, the Angels and Seattle later usually would have minimum effect on the ultimate aim, which seems to be to keep Dan O'Dowd and Clint Hurdle employed.

But so far, and for now, the Rockies have designs on a division title, as do all the teams in the NL West, grouped as they are like wigs in a hatbox.

For the first time in 10 years - yes, this thing has lasted a decade, demanding these sorts of perspectives on how it is all working - the Rockies may need to care as much about artificial games as real ones, not that it is easy to tell the difference.

And to get back to that 10th anniversary thing for a moment, the only year ending in zero that should be celebrated is the actual zero, which means none of this foolishness would have started and we could have spent the past 10 years getting rid of the designated hitter or getting Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame.

This is working about as well as most sideshows do, interesting until you look behind the curtain.

It is irritating to the dancing dogs that must perform, unloved by the very folks who profit from it and apologized for by conceding that this might be the great legacy of commissioner Bud Selig, not counting that vacant World Series or the steroid epidemic, of course.

Selig, himself, modestly declines credit, saying that he was just the handbasket and not the hell, whereas interleague baseball may truly be the most harmless of all Selig's actions.

Blessed inaction would better be the commissioner's method, and when we think of his other bonehead ideas, such as wild cards and division playoffs and All-Star results determining home-field advantage (Hey, how about this? Home field goes to the team with the best record, so that we may keep a little bit of what's left of a 162-game season), we are inclined to give him something, and if it is interleague baseball, well, at least it isn't shootouts.

Yes, I can see that. Shootouts or sudden death instead of extra innings. The great expansive parameters of the game, the limitlessness, the impractical concept of infinity competing with the wonderful, precise geometry of baseball, none of that means anything if somebody comes up with another way to make a buck.

Heretofore, all of this has meant nothing to the Rockies, or no better than 40 percent, roughly their success rate.

Whether they beat an American League team or whether they would be excluded from playing games against the National League that might have a bearing on their National League record or where they finish in the final standings - even as the dreaded wild card - that was left for other teams to commiserate over.

If the Yankees came to town, that was a big show, and after gate receipts were counted, someone might have wondered about the score.

Just how much does winning an American League game really mean to the more vital and ultimate standings in the National League?

A half a game? Two games? Nothing? Examples can be given of teams that missed the playoffs because they did not do well in these concocted fabrications and others to show just the opposite.

Of course, any game should be played to win and all of this will sort itself out on the calculator, but the sheer disparity and arbitrariness of the competition (the Rockies are usually an example of a soft touch) warps everything.

It just has not made any difference to the Rockies before.

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