Your Guide To This Weekend’s Interleague Matchups

Yankees at Cubs: Forget about World Series played when your grandfather was young. These two teams played a memorable series at Wrigley Field in 2003, when, among other things, Kerry Wood and Hee Seop Choi collided going after a popup; Choi suffered a concussion and an ambulance had to drive onto the field at Wrigley for the first (and only) time. No hype needed for this one.

Pirates at Indians: It's 135 miles driving distance between the two cities. Highlight of the drive: the outskirts of Youngstown. And when you get to Cleveland, you'll see a matchup between two young teams that actually might both have a shot at division titles.

Orioles at Nationals: Only 40 miles separate these two cities. But I have it on good authority that no one will attend this series at all.

Blue Jays at Reds: Cincinnati fans have been lined up for weeks to see this team also partly named after a color, as Toronto hasn't visited Cincinnati since 2003. (Actually, I just made that up. The Blue Jays won two of three in Cincy in '03.)

Marlins at Rays: It is a well-known fact that you cannot get to Tampa from Miami. Or at least, no baseball fan in Florida wants to.

Brewers at Red Sox: There was once another team in Boston. They moved to Milwaukee and played there for about 16 minutes, then left for Atlanta. This has nothing to do with the Brewers franchise, which was in the American League for 28 years and played in Fenway Park many times. Pass this one by.

Angels at Mets: It is 2,799 driving miles from Angel Stadium to Citi Field. If you started this morning, you'd get there after the series ended. So why bother?

Rangers at Braves: This series would be a lot more fun if George W. Bush and Ted Turner still owned these two clubs.

Padres at Twins: These traditional rivals have played in Minnesota just once, in 2005. The winning pitchers in the series were Juan Rincon, Brian Lawrence and Darrell May. It's not likely to get much better this weekend.

Royals at Cardinals: Cubs fans like to complain that the Cubs have to play the White Sox six times a year while the Cardinals get the Royals six times a year and it isn't fair and change the schedule and DOSOMETHINGBUDSELIG! The Royals are 27-36 all-time vs. the Cardinals, while the Cubs are 37-41 against the White Sox. That's a difference of 6.5 games -- about one every two years. Stop complaining about the schedule.

Tigers at Rockies. A little-known MLB rule states that whenever the schedule-makers can't quite get things to match up, the Tigers have to play the Rockies.

White Sox at Diamondbacks. Many Chicagoans have a second home and winter in Arizona. Unfortunately for the White Sox, most of those people are Cubs fans. Friday night features a rare matchup of pitchers who were traded for each other: Edwin Jackson vs. Daniel Hudson.

Giants at Athletics: It is 15.9 miles between the two teams' ballparks and you can get there by train. Even so, it's rumored that no A's fans will attend this series.

Phillies at Mariners: This series wins the "farthest distance" title by 45 miles; it's 2,844 miles from Citizens Bank Park to Safeco Field. Probably worth the drive, too, to see Roy Oswalt face Michael Pineda.

Astros at Dodgers: Because of the unequal number of teams in each league, there is one NL matchup each time interleague play occurs. Somehow, this is Frank McCourt's fault.