Adam Dunn, left, and Alex Rios of the Chicago White Sox. Getty Images

An interleague series featuring teams from Chicago and New York sounds like something to get excited about. Except we're talking about the White Sox and the Mets.

The White Sox, the Chicago baseball team that doesn't play in Wrigley Field, are in Queens this week for the first time ever to face the Mets, the New York ballclub that doesn't have 27 world championships. The teams have played one other three-game series, in Chicago in 2002.

Considering that interleague play started in 1997, it is hard to believe the White Sox have never been to Flushing before. Even more remarkable, there are still eight other interleague permutations that haven't happened yet.

The Yankees, for instance, will host the Los Angeles Dodgers for the first time in the regular season next month—a matchup with a little more buildup than this (not very much) anticipated White Sox-Mets showdown.

"That's how you know somebody didn't do their job," said Mets relief pitcher LaTroy Hawkins, one of the few active players who was in the majors when interleague began. "I don't understand how that's possible."

When the interleague experiment began 16 years ago, one of the primary selling points was that it would allow fans to see opposing teams they otherwise never would.

Apparently, that doesn't apply to Mets fans who wanted to see the White Sox. Or Atlanta Braves fans who want to see the Minnesota Twins. Or St. Louis Cardinals fans who want to see the Texas Rangers.

Meanwhile, the Mets have played 28 interleague games against the Baltimore Orioles and 21 each against the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox.

It has been so long since the Sox and the Mets last met that Tuesday marked third baseman David Wright's first game ever against Chicago. Ex-Met Robin Ventura's playing career didn't end until two seasons after that first meeting—and now he is Chicago's manager.

When asked about the scheduling quirk, most of the people involved reacted with bemused indifference.

Longtime White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko called it "kind of weird." Mets manager Terry Collins joked that the White Sox "are one team I don't know very much about."

Interleague has been around so long at this point that nobody could fathom that this series had never happened before—but nobody thought it was particularly monumental, either.

"I think there's still something to it with certain matchups in certain cases," reliever Scott Atchison said of interleague. "But I don't think a whole lot of people are clamoring over a Seattle-San Diego series."

Nevertheless, there is some evidence that interleague still resonates with fans. The average intraleague attendance across baseball last season was 30,454 per game.

That figure climbed to 34,693 for interleague games. (Until this year, there was no interleague play in April or September, when attendances are typically lower anyway.)

With the players, however, interleague has mostly lost its luster. Hawkins said when interleague play first started, the players were excited to see different ballparks. American League pitchers were excited to finally hit. "It was something new," he said.

But now, between interleague play and the amount of player movement among the 30 teams, most veterans have faced every other team by now. A random series in early May between the Mets and White Sox doesn't carry much cachet.

"I think there was a little more juice," Hawkins said of the early days of interleague. "It's like 'whatever' now. It's like, 'OK, cool.'"

So maybe the White Sox against the Mets isn't all that exciting nowadays. That said, the Sox organization has fond memories of playing in New York: The last time the White Sox played a National League game here was Oct. 15, 1917, beating the New York Giants, 4-2, to clinch the World Series.

Write to Jared Diamond at