This week could be called "forced rivalry week" in Major League Baseball with lots of teams playing two-game home-and-home series against regional or natural rivals. Admittedly, some of these so-called rivalries are more forced than others. This would normally be O's vs. Nats week; however, those two teams will play two three-game series later this summer and into the autumn. So the Orioles ended up with Philadelphia this week, which makes sense based on geography. The Atlanta-Boston series...

With this weekend's series at Nationals Park, the O's and Nats will kick off the interleague portions of their 2010 schedules. Since the first interleague game on June 12, 1997, we've watched 13 seasons of mixed play. After five seasons during which each division played against its same division from the opposing league (the AL East met the NL East in the first years of interleague play), the current format was later adopted in 2002. Today, we watch the O's face teams from various...