Graphic by Dylan Newman
Baseball is a game deeply rooted in its tradition; without its history, it’s just people hitting pieces of wood against a ball.
The Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Robert Manfred spoke on Aug. 17 during an ESPN broadcast of the Little League Classic game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Mets about his interest in realigning the American and National leagues into geographical conferences and the potential of adding two more teams.
The Little League Classic is a game played annually in MLB where participants of the Little League World Series and their families attend an MLB game at Historic Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, according to an MLB webpage.
Baseball allowed me to bond and spend time with my father, who was my Little League coach.
We had a long-standing friendly American league rivalry between our favorite teams, his favorite being the Detroit Tigers and mine being the Athletics, who no longer play in Oakland.
Manfred’s position as commissioner is coming to a planned end in 2029, according to an Feb. 15, 2024 article by ESPN.
When asked about the potential of expansion and realignment during the broadcast, Manfred said he sees that coming down the road.
“I think if we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign,” Manfred said. “We can save a lot of wear-and-tear on our players in terms of travel.”
Today’s MLB players are travelling thousands of miles during the regular season to attend games across North America. The Los Angeles Dodgers have travelled the most miles this season, with 48,649 miles travelled according to a Baseball Savant webpage.
The Dodgers are followed in most miles by the Athletics, the San Diego Padres, the Seattle Mariners, and the San Francisco Giants, which are located on the West Coast.
Geographical divisions could decrease the amount of time that these teams are spending travelling. On the other hand, teams could spend less time traveling, which would act to improve the working conditions of the players.
For example, the teams like the Giants, Athletics’s, Padres, Dodgers could exist within a division of themselves, where they spend the majority of their time playing teams that are on the same coast as them.
The league is great because these teams are traveling, and where it currently stands, each team plays each other at least once. Expanding could damage that.
Last season, the Athletics played their final game in Oakland. I went to the second-to-last game with my family and they watched as I cried sorrowful tears of history being erased before our very eyes.
I was forced to become a fan of the game itself, as I wasn’t interested in abandoning the game altogether.
I appreciate watching and tracking players across the league, not just exclusively the ones of my childhood team. I’ve gained a deep appreciation for the game and the traditions that have existed within it for over a century.
Of course, I’m still very upset about the selfish owner of the Athletics, John Fisher, ripping a storied franchise from a city full of loyal and reverent fans.
Luckily, there are at least organizations out there that exist for the purpose of supporting the players, since the fans’ loyalty doesn’t really matter anyway.
The Major League Baseball Players Association is a labor union that currently advocates for the working conditions of MLB players involved with their program, with a collective bargaining agreement in effect until 2026, according to a MLBPA webpage.
Adding more teams would be in the best interest of the MLBPA, as more teams means more players.
The idea of changing things based on geography or market size could potentially not bode well with current members of that union, which could potentially result in a strike which would cause stoppage of play during the regular season.
The American and National leagues that exist today are both more than a hundred years old, with the National League being established in 1876 and the American League following in 1901, according to the History Channel webpage.
Making changes to these leagues would forever change the fabric of the game and outcast baseball traditionalists like myself to get with the program or quit watching.
The beauty of the game of baseball is entrenched in its history. Manfred, if you want to retire in grace, please don’t change the game at all.