Chipper Jones loves interleague play, but isn’t so chipper about playing the annual rivalry games that have been added to the interleague format in more recent seasons. For baseball fans in the nation’s three biggest cities, what’s not to like about having six games each summer between the Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox and Angels-Dodgers?

For Jones and the Braves, however, six games against the Boston Red Sox mean a pair of tough series with a perennial contender while division rival Philadelphia gets Toronto and Kansas City in its six so-called rivalry games this season. The Braves, who play the American League Central in their other interleague matchups, will face Detroit, Minnesota, Cleveland and Boston twice this summer. That’s a tough interleague schedule. Jones believes the Braves may have the toughest one in the majors.

Some might say Jones is whining, but he’s got a valid point. With the leagues divided into divisions, every team in a division should play essentially the same schedule to determine which is the best team in it. With the rivalry series putting a kink in scheduling, that’s impossible. The Mets, for instance, will play teams from all three American League divisions in 2007. They will face Detroit, Minnesota, Oakland and the Yankees twice, while the Phillies get the White Sox, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto and KC.

"If we're going to play the American League Central, everybody has to play all the teams in the American League Central," Jones said. "This split-it-up and we have to play our rival in the American League East stuff, I don't get it. It's unfair for us and the Mets on a year-in, year-out basis to have to play the Yankees and Red Sox when other teams don't.”

Another aspect of the rivalry series that Jones didn’t mention is that the big-city matchups are terrific for New York, Chicago and Los Angeles -- and Missouri gets to see the Royals-Cardinals -- but it’s a phenomenon lost on most of the other big league clubs. What’s Boston and Atlanta have in common? That both franchises played in Boston more than 50 years ago?

"We should do it the way we did it the first five or six years of interleague play, and that's play every team in the American League East, every team in the West and so on," Jones said.

Jones may be right, but the excitement and dollars generated by Mets-Yankees, Cubs-Sox and Angels-Dodgers guarantee these clubs will play one another each and every season, rather than every three years.