I love Joe Buck. He's the best announcer there is. Especially for football. But especially for baseball. Here's a quote from today's Red Sox-Phillies game (by the way, the now 1st-place Red Sox... thought I'd throw that in. )

Buck was talking about David Ortiz and his RBI's from last night and from the first inning in today's game. Then there was a shot of John Olerud in the dugout and Buck said this:

"There's John Olerud, who if the Red Sox have a lead later in the game will take over at first for defensive reasons... (pause) Those reasons being he's better... (pause) at playing first."

Only he could get away with stating the obvious without it sounding silly.

Anyway, back to the interleague rivalries subject. Setting up the "natural" rivalries is only half the story, because they only play those series twice a year. The rest of the interleague games are rotated, and because of the NL-AL disparity (16 teams vs. 14 teams), there's always one totally NL game going while the rest of the teams are playing interleague. Not only does this come off as awkward, but not every team plays the same number of interleague games.

I have a solution which would also be a solution to another problem (and would make Bud Selig happy - although I'm loathe to do that because I think that no commisioner has made as many blunders as he has, but that's a topic for another day). Contraction. This is definitely a sensitive topic, but in some cases it seems necessary - and it would help to bring balance to the leagues.

The first team to go is obvious (in fact, it should have been an obvious mistake to add the team in the first place). Who ever thought that it would be a good idea to have not one, but two major league teams in the state of Florida. One has to go, and no it's not the Marlins like Selig first suggested a couple of years ago, because you just can't contract a team that has had such success making the playoffs (and they've won two of the last eight World Series!) Clearly, the Devil Rays should be contracted due to poor attendance numbers, even worse team success and relatively ridiculous payroll.

The most logical other team to contract is the Colorado Rockies, whose attendance numbers have been declining steadily the past few years, and who haven’t made the playoffs (or even come close) in many years. The other possibility is the Milwaukee Brewers, who have not had much success at the gates or in the standings, or the Minnesota Twins, except they make the playoffs year after year. There are other teams showing equally bad numbers – such as the Pittsburgh Pirates – but whose history is too great to even consider contracting them.

If indeed you do contract Tampa Bay and Colorado, then all you'd have to do is move the Brewers to the AL East, and you'd have 14 teams per league. To make it even more paralleled, move the Astros to the NL West (to be across from the Rangers in the AL West) and move the Twins to the AL West (to be across from the D'Backs). The natural interleague rivalries would then look like this, split up by division:

NL – AL East
New York – New York
Atlanta – Boston
Washington – Baltimore
Philadelphia – Toronto
Florida – Milwaukee

NL – AL Central
Chicago – Chicago
St. Louis – Kansas City
Cincinnati – Cleveland
Pittsburgh – Detroit

NL – AL West
Los Angeles – Los Angeles/Anaheim
San Francisco – Oakland
San Diego – Seattle
Arizona – Minnesota
Houston – Texas

The NL Central would get to have only four in their division after so many years of having six. And no more disparity. Interleague, that is...