Before the month of June (and some of May) was devoted to playing the other league, you could divide my baseball fandom into two sections: before I saw Cooperstown and since I’d seen Cooperstown. We’ll call those eras BC and SC for convenience. In that time we’ll call BC, I was learning to be a fan. I knew I loved the Phillies and I knew that baseball was a great game.

Then, the summer of 1984 came around and my eyes were opened. I saw Cooperstown and learned the history of baseball. I learned that there was a royal family in the sport and that they were called the New York Yankees. That royal family had gone into decline and it seemed to be the sort of decline that would never end. Therefore, I felt sympathy and affection for baseball’s royal family as long as it didn’t interfere with my Phillies fandom.

To a lesser degree, I felt the same sympathy but not as much affection for the previous royal family of baseball: the Boston Red Sox. It was just two or three years SC, that I learned it was a mortal sin to have affection for both the Yankees and the Red Sox. I wished good fortune to both teams and to any American League team playing a non-Phillies National League pennant winner. The National League team in the World Series had to have beaten my Phillies while the American League team was innocent of such crimes.

Back in those days, it was safe to have your favorite team and then a few favorites from the other league. After all, your favorite team had a very small chance of playing the other league in a game that mattered. I knew that I disliked the Dodgers (just leftovers from the 70s), didn’t like the Cardinals, had serious problems with the Pirates and so on until you reached the New York Mets. I despised the Mets and everything they stood for. Anyone who could beat the Mets earned my immediate sympathy.

It took the 1986 World Series debacle for me to decide between the Yankees and Red Sox for my true favorite American League team. When Bill Buckner messed up one play (after a good season I knew nothing about), the Yankees locked up my American League allegiance as my second favorite team. This affection lasted longer than most of my warm and pleasant memories of childhood.

By the early 90s, the Braves replaced the Mets as my most hated team in baseball temporarily. That’s when the Yankees, whom I’d all but forgotten, returned from baseball oblivion. The Yankees with all of their history and majesty beat the mighty and despised Braves. If you beat my most hated team in those days, you earned my loyalty. I continued to love and support baseball’s royal family and its new dynasty.

Unfortunately, someone decided that baseball owners are not rich enough. After trying to do such things as limit the pay of players (who seemed to be the ones the fans paid to see), the owners came up with Interleague play. For me, baseball was and is ruined. I could no longer be safe having any affection for teams in that other league because they could meet the Phillies in the regular season and hurt their record. After a few years of this new system, I discovered that this other league savaged the Phillies’ record.

That brings me to last night’s “game” against the now hated New York Yank-mes. Even though I’m 26 years SC, the Baseball Hall of Fame has left a mark on me. It’s not the same building but the hated Yank-mes did a decent job replicating the House that Ruth Built. The Phillies were playing on the closest thing to hallowed ground in the mere regular season and I couldn’t manage my usual hatred.

Maybe the Phillies felt the same way because they failed to show up. Fenway Park was also a shrine to me especially since I got to sit out near the Green Monster back in 1988. How could we sully these grounds by playing mere regular season baseball? The Phillies didn’t show up for that series either.

I’ve been working in overdrive somewhat literally here at GUFS because baseball is such a big part of my reason to live in the summer. Since the Red Sox came to Citizen’s Bank Park to open Interleague play, I’ve been spewing all the bile I can produce. I’ve run out of juice. I was hoping that my grudge from last year’s World Series would get me through this pointless series but it hasn’t. My Phillies lost to the best team in baseball last Fall and we made it close. If a few pitches had been made, there would have been a seventh game and who knows what would have happened?

I refuse to drink the Kool-Aid like so many other fans. It may keep me off local sports broadcasts but I blame Interleague play for the Phillies’ traditional June woes. July simply cannot come soon enough to satisfy me. When July comes, every win will bring the Phils closer to the postseason. We will be back to the usual double stakes in every game. If we’re playing a divisional opponent, we  play to help our chances at the division and to hurt our opponent. If we’re playing someone from another division, we’re helping our own Wild Card chances and hurting their possible second chance. The games will matter more.

We’ll be playing genuine rivals and I will not have to try manufacturing bile. This current schedule sucks. I like the Red Sox for the most part, the Yankees are baseball to me and the Twins are probably my new second favorite team. If there’s no hatred, all I can do is hope to see good baseball but that’s been missing.

Phillies, I beg you. Show up and play some ball. Pitch, hit, catch and throw. Play these games like they mean something. If left-handed hitters only have to pull the ball 315 feet for a homer, it might mean that it’s time for some old school baseball. I know those Yankees are pretty but you play the same game. Why not bruise a few Yankee ribs and see if they still stand in there looking for that pitch to pull? If they retaliate, we’ll have men on base.

I’m no longer a baseball fan. I’m a Phillies fan. Stop playing Little League baseball. Other teams are used to defiling this national baseball shrine. Perhaps the only way to end this foolish Interleague mess is to have the American League beg to throw out the barbarians. In 1993, the city of Toronto seemed intimidated by the approaching horde. It won’t work until you stop playing like children.

I better not see any clean uniforms out there on either team!