Improving Baseball

The new baseball commissioner has been making the rounds to various talk shows talking about what his plans are for the game. Primarily he wants the game to be more viewer friendly to attract more fans. When pressed for details, it's obvious he wants more offense and faster games. That's why he's advocating no more defensive shifts and an on field time clock for pitchers, much like the play clock in football for quarterbacks. He also wants any pitcher that comes into the game to face at least TWO batters before leaving. No more left-handed specialists coming in to get a quick grounder for an out and then taking HIM out for a right-handed specialist to try to do the same thing to the next batter.

He doesn't say these things will come about quickly but that he wants to get a dialog going among players, fans, owners, and commentators to help fix the game.

"Fix" the game? I know what he's trying to say, but as the new commissioner I think he's going about it the wrong way. The game doesn't need fixing. It needs tweaking, over time, as small things become apparent.

These are the things I would suggest, right now, that would speed the game up. At a later date, I'll give you a radically different game that I'll call NEW baseball, that'll make it more fun for the fans.

I'll preface all of this by saying the current proposal of having less time between inning breaks is something nearly everyone is going to support, and it's a step in the right direction. It might be ALL that's needed. But if they want more ideas, here are mine:

First up, get rid of the seventh inning stretch ceremony. It USED to be time when fans sang "Take me Out to the Ball Game" during a NORMAL commercial break. It was a fun thing for fans who were at the ball park ONLY.  It's now devolved into a Super Bowl-like halftime show with special guest singers, and bands, sometimes orchestras, accompanying full choirs singing 14 verses of America the beautiful. And THEN they sing "Take me Out to the Ball Game." Baseball doesn't need a halftime ceremony every game. And it sure doesn't need it just as the game is getting over. Do it at the All-Star Game if you want. Do it at the FIRST World Series game each year if you must, but nothing, and I mean nothing, slows down an already intolerably long baseball game like that convoluted new version of the seventh inning stretch. It not PART of the game, it's recent in origin, so get rid of it. Go back to singing "Take me Out to the Ball Game" during the regular commercial break.

Secondly, limit every at-bat to nine pitches. If the pitcher hasn't walked the guy by then and the hitter hasn't got on base yet, he's out. No more watching an expert at hitting foul balls foul off pitch after pitch. If the count is 3-2 and the pitcher keeps throwing strikes, if the hitter fouls off the ninth pitch, he is out. It's a strikeout. Period. Baseball in it's early days had a rule like this. It's time again. And it's not without precedent.  Even today if you can't hit a ball in play on the third strike, while bunting, it's strike three. Reward the pitcher for throwing strikes. Punish the batter for not doing something with those pitches other than foul balls.

Third, have games end in ties after 10 innings. Neither pitcher gets a decision.

The first two things will speed up the game 10-15 minutes or more, every game. The third will allow fans to get to bed at a reasonable time. But you will notice that the second one of them will change the game dramatically. And I could see many die-hard fans not liking it.

And that's my point. It will CHANGE the game. I hear Mike Greenburg on Mike and Mike saying that baseball fans will have to get used to improvements because the game is always evolving. And he misses what's already great about baseball. It changed so little that you can actually compare stats and players from different eras. When Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth's all-time homerun record, a record that had been there for decades, it meant something. When Roger Maris broke the single season homerun record it meant something as well. ANY changes to the game make it a different game.

My suggestion will change the number of strikeouts by pitchers each season, probably radically. Their pitch counts will go down as well. They might even have longer careers and better career numbers.That means their accomplishments won't be comparable to those who have gone before.

The connection to the past, to baseball's illustrious history will be lost. There will have to be an asterisk added to every single hitter's stats and every single pitcher's stats from now on. Strikeouts will go up but history will be lost.

I'd like to add that the same thing will happen if defensive shifts are outlawed. Or a 20 second pitch clock is installed, or if a pitcher is required to pitch to at least two batters if he is in there. Every change you make to the game will cause its link to the past to be damaged. Eventually enough changes will cause that link to be severed. Modern day fans with no attention span who spend three quarters of the game looking at their cell phones won't care. And if that's who modern day commissioners want to appeal to, I can't stop them. But one of the biggest problems Americans have as a whole is that most don't remember, or don't know their history. Any history. That means they don't have enough reference points to help them see things clearly. They can no longer connect the dots in a way that adds to their experience, giving them greater perspective or insight.

I like the current rule proposal change  that says you should be playing the game in two minutes again after each half-inning switch, because that is what baseball had ALWAYS used to do. The game has gotten away from its roots. I would argue that throwing endless strikes to a batter so he could keep fouling them off has done the same thing. It's getting further away from what necessary and originally intended. A batter should have a reasonable chance to get on base. He shouldn't take all day doing it IF he's seeing strikes.

I would like to also add, at this point, that the goals of having more offense and speeding the game up MAY VERY WELL BE INCOMPATIBLE. The games that last the longest, with the most pitching changes, are the high scoring games. The fastest games are well-pitched masterpieces with great defensive alignments. The new rule change proposals favoring offenses will most likely delay the ends of games. It will not make them faster.

They failed to connect the dots.