If MLB realignment is looming, here’s what Giants fans should hope for

For baseball fans of a certain age, the term “radical realignment” can still trigger flashbacks. When Bud Selig ran the place, he was the first commissioner of Major League Baseball to work exclusively on behalf of the owners. In 1997, he proposed a few teams switching divisions and leagues, along with six divisions getting squashed into four. Also, I’m sure there were other horrors that I’m not remembering, like the 27th and 28th wild-card spots, but let’s focus on what we know.

It was a ghastly proposal.

Remember that this was before interleague play had started, and it was also when the most significant barroom baseball debate was DH or no DH? National League fans had very strong opinions on this. I was one of them. Turns out you do get used to it, and that the thrill of a pitcher getting a hit 10 percent of the time wasn’t worth the other 90 percent of unwatchable baseball. My bad. Back then, though, this kind of idea was sacrilege.

Since then, there have been other ideas to get used to, like the idea that there would be at least one interleague series on any given game day. Also, sacrilege and something that we got used to in a hurry. It’s an absolute delight to see the Giants play all 29 teams every year. If you’ll allow me to borrow a quote from Master Yoda, “Variety is the spice of life, and the spice must flow.” He was spot on, and it turns out that new experiences allow us all to “live long and prosper.”

Maybe that radical realignment wasn’t so bad, after all. However, then you get to the teams that had to switch leagues, and several of them were part of the original 16 MLB teams. Convenience was coming at the expense of something that appalled fans of the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals and all of the other league-switchers. Then you get to the extreme geographical imbalance. It seemed shortsighted to divide the country down the middle and give the NL to one side and the AL to another.

This comes up now because realignment is back on the table. Current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that one of his primary goals before leaving office was to add two expansion teams, reorganize the divisions to accommodate them and limit the travel for all 30 teams. The original radical realignment is a look at how dumb these proposals can get. However, it isn’t the only way realignment could be unpalatable.

The Athletic’s Stephen Nesbitt took a stab at his version of realignment, following in the footsteps of co-worker Jim Bowden, who did it a few years before. In the interest of collegial spirit, I will not evaluate the merits of either of these proposals, even though only one of them contained ideas that gave me Havana syndrome-like symptoms. I will state what Giants fans can hope for from realignment. Everything else is doable.

Giants, Dodgers in same division: This is not negotiable

Does this read like I’m arguing on behalf of two of baseball’s special li’l teams, and that they deserve special treatment for being so special? Good. It’s supposed to. These franchises needed moving trucks to keep the rivalry alive. It’s been a thing for over a century. It’s hard to imagine what would be significant enough to discard that kind of built-in excitement and fan interest, but saving a few million on travel isn’t it?

The Dodgers and Giants need to remain in the same division. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)

No, this would be done by someone looking at a line graph with “2027-2030” in the legend, with the line going straight up. Just because the graph doesn’t cover other years, that doesn’t mean they won’t exist. They probably will!

My prediction is that after Dec. 31 of each year (approximately), it will become an entirely new year, and the further the Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers get from their divisional rivalry, the further away the fan interest will move.

Teams like the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees can become blood rivals for a short while, but it never sticks. You dislike the Cardinals more than the Milwaukee Brewers, most likely. Still, the Giants-Cards rivalry never compares to the Giants-Dodgers, even at its peak (same goes for Giants-Phillies, even though we’ll always have the Eli Whiteside hop).

Giants stay in NL

All the franchises are in the same league as they are now, except for maybe one or two of the ones that haven’t been around for longer than 50 years.

There’s no functional difference between the leagues now, so this is an aesthetic complaint more than a logistical one. And it’s hard to explain why this is so distasteful, other than, “It is contrary to what I’m used to,” which is one of the least effective statements that humanity has ever developed.  At the same time, if there’s no functional difference … maybe don’t mess with the leagues?

Nesbitt’s proposal has one team switching leagues, and it’s the Colorado Rockies. That’s why Nesbitt is The Athletic’s ace: He gets it. The Rockies won’t mind. About once or twice a month, they probably forget they’re in the National League at all. They’ll get used to it. Ask Houston Astros and Brewers fans (under the age of 40).

Keep the Padres, Giants together, too

This would have much more to do with the San Diego Padres and Dodgers sticking together, which has finally developed into the kind of rivalry that should have existed all along. The Padres were just too incompetent, historically speaking, to get anything going between the two teams. Now it’s hard to see it going away over the next century, especially since San Diego doesn’t have an NFL, NBA or NHL team. The San Diego soccer teams and clubs will continue to grow, but it’s a baseball town now.

There’s a Giants-Padres rivalry, too. Kind of. They share an enemy-of-my-enemy bond, but they also have direct history together, from the 1987, 1998 and 2010 races (among others) to the individual accomplishments (Barry Bonds regularly putting the Padres on a leash and making them run an obstacle course for the amusement of those in attendance, promising them only one biscuit for finishing the course, but never giving them the biscuit).

More importantly, San Diego is a great city with a great ballpark that’s a long drive or a short flight away. Keep as many of those teams together as possible. Encouraging these kinds of relatively easy destination games should be a priority for the league, as it almost certainly retains more fans and creates new ones. Giving that up because there was nowhere else to fit in the Salt Lake City Salt Licks would be shortsighted.

And … that’s about it? With the DH and interleague bogeymen already here, these are the only real sticking points. Dodgers. Padres. National League. Almost everything else can be haggled with. Two divisions per league appeals to me personally, but I’m fine with three or four.

The location of the expansion teams will also create strong opinions, with the Salt Lake City idea being extremely limited in vision. The city itself is a quarter the size of Oakland, and before anyone chimes in with “consider the entire metropolitan area,” note that it’s about four Fremonts.

Also, the defined metropolitan area is spread out over almost a quarter of the entire state, with nearly a 10th of the population density of the Bay Area. All it would take is one crappy owner, one heir who inherits the team without spending a single day of his life in the real world, and the problem would be 10 times worse than the A’s issues. That’ll be something for future Manfreds to deal with, though. He’d watch the line go up until he retires.

The Portland expansion efforts make far more sense, but interest in bringing a team there needs to be kept in place as leverage for the naughty teams that won’t build a publicly financed new ballpark. Portland will continue to be the best way to threaten cities now that Las Vegas is out of play, and that’s the only reason the league would seriously consider putting a team in Utah.

Sacramento has thrown its hat in the ring as a potential expansion site, too, and the two cities are the only remaining places on the West Coast to keep the threat active, assuming that Oakland will continue to be ignored.

Do you like how baseball is played in Colorado? Would you like another team in the league that has to face the same kind of double jeopardy (having to defeat their opponents and physics when building a baseball team)? Boy, that sounds fun.

Let me add one more.

If there’s a SLC team, take it and Rockies and put them in any other division

Far away from the Giants. Maybe even in a different league or sport. One Coors Field is already unpalatable enough, thank you. One three-game series every other year sounds like the perfect amount.

These are my list of demands, and the penalty for not meeting them would be extreme disgruntlement from me while continuing to consume MLB goods and services as voraciously and irresponsibly as ever. You’ve been warned.

(Top photo from the 2021 NLDS: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)