Presented by BACON BOISE.

This Day In Sports…June 12, 1997:

In a drastic but long-awaited departure for a tradition-governed sport, the San Francisco Giants beat the Texas Rangers, 4-3, in the first regular-season interleague game in Major League Baseball history. A sellout crowd of 46,507 at Arlington watched Nolan Ryan and Willie Mays throw out ceremonial first pitches before the game, which started two hours earlier than three other interleague games that night. Now, of course, there are interleague games every day of the season. 

The first interleague pitch was thrown by the Rangers’ Darren Oliver, and the Giants’ Darryl Hamilton was the first batter (Hamilton also got the game’s first base hit). San Francisco’s Glenallen Hill became the first National League designated hitter in a regular-season contest.  And the first home run came from teammate Stan Javier. Mark Gardner notched the landmark win for the Giants and Rod Beck the save.

Bill Veeck, forever the promoter, was president of the Chicago Cubs in 1933 when he proposed that each major league team (16 at the time) play four interleague games in the middle of the season. There was some support for the idea, but it ultimately went nowhere. Another push was made in 1956, suggesting much of the scheduling structure we see in interleague play today. But that proposal was not adopted, either.  

Finally, a structure for AL vs. NL regular-season games was approved in 1996. The first five years of interleague play (1997-2001) restricted games to geography by division (the Giants from the NL West vs. the Rangers from the AL West, for example). Cross-country games were added in 2002, with all interleague games from then through 2012 occurring before the All-Star break. Then in 2023, all 30 MLB team began to play each other every year. 

The first year of interleague play saw the National League win 117 games to the American’s 97. But overall, the AL has dominated. The count through 2024 was 4,283 to 4,059. Interleague play has taken some lustre from the All-Star Game and even the World Series.  But it’s now part of baseball’s fabric (Yankees-Dodgers was fun a week and a half ago).

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.) 

VISIT OUR SCOTT SLANT SPONSOR SITES:

Bacon Boise
Zamzows
BBSI Boise
Commercial Tire
Harmon Travel
Corso Italian Steak
Pool Scouts