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Opening night of the baseball playoffs provided some great theater, assuming you could stay awake long enough to watch.
That the 12th-inning win by Kansas City over Oakland took nearly five hours to play highlights a problem baseball still has to address. Still, the return to small ball in a sport plagued by steroids should be celebrated just as much as the first postseason win by the Royals in 29 years.
But as Bud Selig prepares to take a victory lap on behalf of the owners he represented so well, there are issues he hasn't handled nearly as well. While the game is awash in cash that is making both owners and players richer than ever, it has become increasingly marginalized as a national sport as attendance sags in some cities and television ratings continue to sink.
Incoming commissioner Rob Manfred has a chance to do something about that. As the playoffs begin, here are a few suggestions to help the grand old game:
HIRE VINNY — Clayton Kershaw may get the Dodgers in the World Series all by himself, but how about giving us a treat once they're there? Put Vin Scully in the broadcast booth for Game 1 and let of the rest of the nation find out why the 86-year-old announcer is so revered in Southern California. Let Scully work alone as always and spin stories, like the time in 1956 he called Don Larsen's perfect game at Yankee Stadium on NBC and was afraid to say much more than "Strike 3" because he had been told the new medium would tell the story. Nothing to lose, because World Series ratings have been sinking for decades now.
SET THINGS STRAIGHT — Selig will be gone in January, which is probably a good thing for baseball. Selig did what commissioners are supposed to do, which is make owners money and get taxpayers to build new ballparks. But he turned a blind eye to the steroid scandal and will leave office still thinking Barry Bonds is the career home run leader. The new commissioner should on his first day of the job declare any offensive mark set between 1988 (Jose Canseco's heyday) and today void simply because they can't be believed.
ALL STARS — If Manfred still has time on his first day he should abolish Selig's rule giving the league that wins the All-Star game home-field advantage in the World Series. The desperate attempt to make the All-Star game meaningful in some way was a joke from the beginning.
SOLVE THE DH — Either ban the designated hitter or make it mandatory in the National League, too. No other major league sport plays by different rules in different divisions, but baseball hasn't figured out the DH dilemma since it was introduced in the American League 41 years ago. It's an issue in the postseason when AL pitchers are ill-prepared to hit in NL parks, and NL rosters are not built with a slugger to plug in the middle of the lineup.
FIX INSTANT REPLAY — Baseball was a latecomer to the instant replay party, but got it mostly right in its inaugural season. What needs to go away is the dance that has developed when managers come out of the dugout to stall while getting word whether to appeal a call or not.
LET PETE IN — It's way past time to allow Pete Rose back into the game. Selig's refusal to revisit the subject of the hits king doesn't make sense anymore, if it ever did. Rose has more than served his time for betting on games, yet his only connection to the game remains signing baseballs in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, others who have disgraced baseball by using steroids are working in dugouts and keep appearing on Hall of Fame ballots.
SPEED THINGS UP — In one of his final acts in office, Selig formed a committee to come up with recommendations to speed up games that now top out at an average of more than three hours apiece. No committee needed because it's mostly common sense. Make batters stay in the box; don't let pitchers stroll from the mound. Add to that some batting gloves that don't need to be constantly adjusted, and the game will suddenly be a half hour shorter.
ONE SONG IS ENOUGH — Playing the national anthem before the game is a time-honored tradition that began in baseball and has been embraced by almost every sport. But is there really a need for another song during the seventh-inning stretch to remind us we live in the greatest country on earth? "God Bless America" is a fine tune, but fans buy tickets for a baseball game, not a patriotic rally.
CELEBRATE KERSHAW — He's most often compared to Sandy Koufax, but it may not be long before Clayton Kershaw is the one that others are compared to. He's an artist on the mound, with four straight ERA titles, and will likely be the National League MVP as well as Cy Young winner. He's also the highest paid pitcher in the game, but he and his wife are heavy into charitable activities, including building an orphanage in Africa. About the only thing Kershaw hasn't done is pitch well deep into the postseason. Get that done this year and lot of people will be celebrating along with him.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
16 Comments
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Robert Haddan
This Dodgers fan's half-cooked ideas about how to "fix" baseball is a waste of pixels. Let's water-down Vin Scully's legacy and ignore the myriad of other factors that led to inflated stats in the 1990s-early 2000s. Adjusting batting gloves isn't why the game is taking too long and replay has only been around one year... you think there will be changes to the process? Yeesh...
nath
I agree, baseball needs a fix. Someone needs to fix it so that it isn't the most boring sport in the world.
Fox Sora Winters
Take a leaf out of Futurama's book: reinvent Baseball as Blurnsball. All you need is a ball on a bungee cord, a giant mutant spider, and plenty of meth for "inspiration" when writing the rules.
Pandabelle
This is fiction. The number of people who attended an MLB game this season is almost DOUBLE what it was 30 years ago.
lucabrasi
Just learn to play cricket like ladies and gentlemen.
Raymond Chuang
They REALLY do need to speed up the game. The rules are there to reduce a nine-inning game to as little as 2 hours 30 minutes. With the average nine-inning game averaging 3 hours 10 minutes (and sometimes as much as 4 hours!), no wonder why people say the game is too slow by 2014 standards.
Wakarimasen
I agree that baseball is a lame sport.
Kurobune
Yes, indeed ! LET PETE IN ! ! !
The Original Wing
Keep Pete out. Rules are rules.
Half agreed on the "1 song is enough" point - "God Bless America" is unnecessary during the 7th inning stretch. However - they shouldn't do away with the singing - just go back to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
Definitely speed it up. Intentional walks take forever - let the pitcher point to 1st base, and it'll be done instantly. Letting relief pitchers warm up when they enter a game takes forever - find a way to make the bullpen set up more effective for warming up, and have them come in ready to go. Set up a "pitch clock" to set a maximum time between one pitch and the next - if the pitcher takes to long, it's an automatic ball - and the batters need to be ready at all times.
Agreed on All-Star Game and records during the steroid era.
ABSOLUTELY DISAGREE on the intro - the re-discovery of "small ball" is only good for cowardly managers. It's statistically less effective than the alternative - despite what the old farts in the NPB will tell you.
ABSOLUTELY AGREE on Kershaw. I've been posting about him all year in these forums, calling him the best pitcher in the world. That always gets me lots of negative votes. All I can say is: I told you so.Jeff Huffman
I agree with just about everything.
1) Doubt that you will ever reach a consensus on voiding offensive records from 1988 onward. The only way to put a stop to this is harsher penalties with a "death sentence" of being banned from the game for two positive tests.
2) Revoke MLB (and the NFL's) tax exempt status.
3) Umpires need to take the game back by warning batters about stepping out of the box between every pitch (used to be against the rules) and making sure pitchers work more efficiently.
4) Get rid of the DH. In HS baseball, the best players typically hit and pitch well. Why is it that this ends in college or minor league ball? Sure, some kids pitching once a week in HS, playing another position during other games and hitting .400 will not do that as they get older. But pitchers stop being athletes by the time their are in college.
5) "God Bless America" makes my skin crawl. The Mariners stared doing that this year during the 7th inning stretch, before "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." 9/11, NYC, blah, blah, blah. We are the only democracy, that I am aware of, that insists on the national anthem being played before every sporting match. The only other countries that do this sort of thing have been authoritarian regimes. I don't believe in god nor do, apparently at least 65% of other Americans. So why do we continue this "tradition" 13 years after the Yankees started doing it? Made the mistake of getting tickets for a game last season on 9/11. I thought they were going to make a pitch for war bonds during the game - big ass flag ceremony, lots of military personnel honored and a fly-over prior to the game. Guess who pays for the fly-over? Certainly not MLB. I half expected to "Charge!" rather than "Play ball!"
6) &*%k instant replay. Baseball is the only sport that generally has officials standing over most plays with a second official usually never more than 90 feet away as well. The sport is played by imperfect humans and officiated by imperfect humans. Calls will be blown but they generally even out over the course of a game and, certainly, a season. You don't win or lose a game by bad officiating. You lose games by not scoring more runs than the other team. It's just one more thing to slow down the game.
7) No more television time outs. Been to a college or professional football game recently? If the 60-minute game finishes in less than hours, it's a miracle. It completely destroys offensive momentum.
The pace of a baseball game is largely unpredictable and dependent entirely on how good/bad the pitching is. The excuse/whine that none of these sports can make enough revenue without interrupting play to sell bad beer, soft drinks or drugs for erectile dysfunction is simply not true. Domestically, the MLS proves this wrong and internationally, Manchester United is a bigger world brand than the NY Yankees, makes money hand over fist, as does the whole EPL, without commercials interrupting play.
8) Keep the All-Star game, but let the coaches choose the rosters. There are far too many players. Often times some fan favorite that is having an off first half and gets voted on to the team to the exclusion of another player that is having a career season. You don't let fans choose all conference teams in other sports, why should they get to choose all-star teams?
Fadamor
Let's see...
To speed up the game, they need to outlaw stealing. The standard defense against stealing is to chase the runner back on base with a throw to the baseman, then again, and again... So to eliminate that delay, they need to eliminate the CAUSE for that delay. Ban stealing.
sfjp330
The batter should not be able to call time out when the pitcher is already in the motion of delivery mode to disrupt pitchers. It happens time and time again, and umpires allow this to happen because of the current rules. The sudden stop by the pitcher in the middle of the delivery can cause injuries. If the pitcher is in the delivery mode, even if the batter steps out, it should be a live ball and the umpire should call it balls or strike.
nath
The reason just pointing to first base for intentional walks is a bad idea is because sometimes the pitcher will make a wild pitch which can seriously affect the outcome of the game.
ThonTaddeo
The primary reason games take longer is television, specifically television commercials. The commercial breaks between innings get longer and longer and we're supposed to not notice.
Today, if I'm not mistaken, it's 2 minutes and 10 seconds after every half inning on nationally televised games. That means 39 minutes of TV commercials, every single game. Today, advertising is everywhere inside the ballparks and is always in the background: behind the batter, on the outfield walls, above the dugouts. And still commercials are making games longer?
DIfferent "divisions"? The National League and the American League are two different leagues, and until Selig came along there were sharp lines between them. They each had their own presidents and offices, and one league almost never interfered in the other's affairs. That the author seems to not know this is another stain on Selig's legacy. I say bring back the autonomy of the two leagues: then they could each experiment with things and we would have more innovation and improvement.
A Realist
StrangerlandOct. 02, 2014 - 10:44AM JST
"I agree, baseball needs a fix. Someone needs to fix it so that it isn't the most boring sport in the world."
They already have a fix. Didn't you ever watch that episode of The Simpsons where Homer was at the baseball game during a beer strike and said "I never realized how boring this game was without beer!"
nath
Hah! I didn't see that, but that describes it perfectly.