I exchanged texts this morning with a friend who recently retired from a distinguished career in broadcast journalism. We were reminiscing over the days when we went to baseball games that ended in less than two hours. My favorite was when the Phillies beat the Padres at Veterans Stadium 4-2 in less than 1:30 featuring a match-up of Hall of Famer Steve Carlton and ace Randy Jones, who put together several great seasons in the mid-1970's. His featured a match-up in San Diego featuring Jim Kaat, who had a long and distinguished career in the big leagues.
Today, the average age of a fan is 55. The average game takes well over 3 hours to play. The ball is in play less and less thanks to theories involving taking pitches, striking out, launch angles, the value of home runs and the like. Tickets are expensive despite the fierce competition for the average fan's entertainment dollar. Climate change also can make it more unbearable to sit outside for a lengthy period of time.
The most significant changes that baseball made over the past 50 years involved lowering the height of the pitcher's mound in response to dwindling batting averages in the late 1960's and early 1970's, adding the designated hitter in the American League and enforcing the strike zone rule (and holding umpires accountable if they did not do so). The latter meant that effectively umpires had no leeway in calling the lower 18 inches of the zone a strike, and many were reluctant to do so. Again, effectively, that meant that pitchers had a much larger strike zone to play with and developed pitches to take advantage of the more strict enforcement (read: sinkers, splitters). That change took place about 10 years ago.
There are several changes that baseball should consider in order to add more offense to the game and to quicken games, as follows:
1. Enforce time limits in between pitches, in between at bats and in between innings. How many fans have been to minor league games that end in 2:15 or less -- without any sacrificing of the quality of the product?
2. Create the following rule -- every pitcher inserted into a game must pitch to a minimum of three batters in an inning or until the end of the inning (so that a team can pinch-hit for him if it's his turn in the lineup after getting two outs in the prior half inning) and no more than one pitching change per inning (unless a pitcher gets hurt). This will eliminate the specialization of relievers.
3. Consider, for fun, letting a team have a third catcher available in the stands, a la the "emergency goalie" in the NHL that creates good will among the fans. In this fashion, the team can have an "emergency" catcher should the back-up get used as a pinch-hitter or himself have to enter the game because of injury.
4. Study lowering the pitching mound. . . again. . . and what the effect of doing so might have on offenses.
5. Eliminate shifts. Every position must have a fielder in its designated area.
6. Add the DH to the National League. Who wants to see a pitcher hit? You wouldn't want your plumber to try to tear up and re-do your path if he is not a mason, so why have pitchers hit if they hardly practice hitting?
7. Sponsor "The Great American Home Run Hitting Contest" in regions around the country and put up a big prize. You can run regionals at minor-league parks and then culminate the challenge at a fan fest before Game 1 of the World Series. This might spike interest in the game, too.
8. Stop being greedy about the times when you feature post-season games. Do all of them have to start at 8:30 at night? By the time a game might get interesting (that is, after the starting pitcher goes through the lineup once or twice), kids have to go to sleep and get ready for school. Try having games start at 6 p.m. or have an afternoon game every now and then. Even adults who have to get up and go to work might not watch the Series unless their team is involved.
9. Figure out a way to have the average fan not feel stupid and relate to the game. It's great that the teams rely on stats -- they were ignorant for decades, but even fans with advanced degrees cannot make heads or tails of "Baseball Prospectus" or the metrics that teams deploy. In "Men at Work," the late Hall-of-Fame outfielder Tony Gwynn described is approach to being a great hitter thusly -- "See the ball, hit the ball." Today you need a masters in higher math to understand how teams are evaluating players and getting their hitters and pitchers to change their approaches. What's the fun in that?
10. Consider shortening games to 7 innings. The average human attention span once was 22 minutes; now some argue it's under 10 seconds. Sure, there are a lot of details here -- from how much to pay players to how this might have an effect on pitchers and rosters, but if the practical effect were to ensure that a game would take only two hours to play, I think that more fans might be attracted to the product.
11. Finally, baseball needs to get out of this rut of strikeouts, walks and home runs, needs to create more situations where there can be two-out rallies and balls hit off the wall. Perhaps some of the changes I outline above might help accomplish this goal. But let's face it, no one wants to go watch a game that ends 3-1 that takes 3:30, that featured 10 pitchers, 23 strikeouts, 8 walks and 4 solo home runs. Sure, a win's a win, but paying $50 a ticket for a family of four plus parking and concessions is a lot to task for that type of product. Especially when there are so many alternatives on which to spend one's disposable income.
Food for thought. Your thoughts?
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