2013 Red Sox schedule released with interleague changes

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Two years ago, the Red Sox complained bitterly about a nine-game interleague road trip to three straight National League cities.
Such a scheduling quirk, they argued, forced them to sit DH David Ortiz for much of the trip and re-configure their lineup for an extended period.
Beginning next year, that won't be an issue -- even though the Sox will play four road series in National League cities, according to the 2013 schedule, which was officially released Wednesday.
Thanks to realignment and two 15-team leagues, baseball must now schedule interleague play for nearly every day. That means the Sox will begin interleague play in May -- with two games in Philadelphia May 29-30 -- and end it in late September.
That also means that the Sox will only once play consecutive road series: they have back-to-back three-game sets in San Francisco and Los Angeles from Aug. 19-25.
The other NL trip is two-game series in Denver against the Colorado Rockies in the final week of the season.
When the schedule was formulated, Major League Baseball and the Players Association agreed to limit interleague play as much as possible in September, so as to not force teams to play by rules other than their own in the final weeks of the season when playoff races are at stake.Unlike past seasons, under the new schedule, the Red Sox do not visit any non-division AL teams more than once.Another scheduling quirk has the Yankees not visiting Boston until after the All-Star break. When the Yanks do come to Fenway, all three of their visits are on the weekend -- presumably to offer MLB's TV partners, Fox and ESPN, the maximum exposure for Sox-Yankee games.

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