Baseball is Dying

There.

It needed to be said.

Baseball had a golden opportunity to be the first sport back, the first mover in a COVID world.  And it blew it.  Why?  Because absolutely nothing comes easily when you are dealing with the owners and the players.  And the baseball media?  Oh, the newspaper columnists will write articles chastising the players' union and the owners on occasion, but the writers themselves are more content to write about nostalgia or what ifs going forward. 

Put simply, everyone is doing what they know how to do, want to do, like to do, but not what is needed to be done.  And what is needed to be done is to get the players back on the field, and to get people watching baseball again.

The owners will tell you that pre-virus all was okay with baseball, that revenues kept on increasing.  What they shied away from telling us is that the average age of a fan keeps increasing and the average attendance keeps dropping.  Atop that, there is a big gulf between the mean and median salaries (translated:  there are many fewer players making more than the mean than there are making below the mean), which generally makes the players unhappy.  Put differently, the collective bargaining agreement has been bad for the players, as analytics have evolved so much during the past several years that few players can get a big contract when they are free agents at 29 or 30 as compared to, say, five years ago. 

What makes things worse is that the game has become unwatchable.  Climate change makes it tougher to side outside and watch a game, and the pace of play is staggeringly slow.  The ball is only in play for about 15 minutes of the 3.5 hours or more that we are in the park.  And much of that is for home runs or strike outs.  Forget Earl Weaver's beloved bases-clearing double with two outs in the seventh.  That does not happen that often.  There are too many minutes elapsing between half innings and too many seconds between pitches.  And too many pitching changes.

The owners also are deluding themselves when they point to increased revenue numbers owing to TV deals.  The premise for those deals is that the networks and cable companies can sell the ads to justify those numbers, and, presumably, that the older demographic will have more disposable income to spend upon retirement.  I am not sure that was true before the pandemic; it certainly cannot be true now.  First, it is uncertain what ads they can sellin this economy.  Also, before the pandemic, about 80% of those retiring in 5-10 years had not saved enough for retirement, so where will they find disposable income to buy the advertisers' products, let alone for the cable subscription that will give them the opportunity to watch the broadcast in the first place?  No, those aging fans might have to make some difficult choices, and among them will be whether they up for a cable subscription or whether they go to the park in the first place.  As they age, parking in a remote lot and walking into a stadium will be difficult.  In addition, as a sign that clubs are worried, they are selling $50 a month access passes to young fans just to get them into the park in a "standing room" capacity.  That suggests that they cannot sell season tickets to that demographic. 

In short, what a mess, what a perfect storm, and you have a players' union that doesn't trust the owners, and an owners group that dislikes the players' union, an office of the commissioner that is weak in terms of the power of the commissioner and a commissioner who got there through building relationships with owners when he was their chief labor negotiator as opposed to a creative marketing type who can help create a vision that can help baseball to avoid the sporting world's natural selection process that has all but sent horse racing and boxing, two of the top five sports fifty years ago, to the scrap heap.  Baseball could be next and become a shadow of its former self -- and quickly.

This is a train wreck, and we are watching the train speeding down the hill toward the cliff with failing breaks.  Only neither the players nor the owners seem able to recognize it let alone to do something about it.

This is what should have happened already:

1.  Teams training in Florida and Arizona at their complexes, using appropriate social distancing rules (and baseball should be easier than even soccer, and soccer's Bundesliga -- the top league in Germany -- has returned just fine).

2.  Expand the rosters to 35 or 40, as you'll want to play as many games as possible say from July 1 through September 30.  Teams will need extra pitching, and players will get nicked up.

3.  Shorten the games.  Yes, shorten them.  Reduce the time between pitches and in between half innings.  Games are five innings, starters only can go three innings, and a team can use only four more pitchers after that.  Adopt the DH for all games.  If a game is tied after 5 innings, have a "braveheart" home run hitting competition.  Each players picks one team, each player gets five balls to hit.  The team with more HRs gets the win.  Each team can have its own pitcher pitch to its player for the HR derby. 

4.  Why?  Kids and those under 35 might pick up interest again, particularly if a 5-inning game might last 1:15 or 1:20 at the most.  You can have two a night if you want if you're baseball, and people all over the country can pick and choose which games they want to watch.  Imagine, a baseball game under two hours?  What a way to get a much younger demographic back into the fold! 

But it won't happen.  The owners and players are creatures of habit.  And they need to write all of their agreements down to the last detail.  That could take weeks if not months, given how many details would need to be ironed out.  But it would get baseball teams back playing again and fans back watching.  Instead, we'll read about the reasons why baseball cannot get back on the field.  We'll read columns that blame the players, columns that blame the owners, and columns that blame both.  In the end, time will sail by, and there will be no baseball in 2020.

None.

So, let's see, going back 26 years.  We have witnessed the following:

1.  Cancellation of the 1994 World Series because of labor unrest.
2.  The steroids era.
3.  The greenies era.
4.  The sign-stealing era.
5.  Endless debates about whether, among others, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are worthy of the Hall of Fame.  (Forget about Pete Rose for a moment).

And now we would have gridlock regarding getting back onto the field at a time when it really is needed.  At a time when it could be the first mover.  At a time when it needs to reinvent itself and attract a whole new generation of fans.

But, no, the players and owners will not get it done. 

And, somehow, they'll still expect all of us to come back in 2021, expressing neverending gratitude that they are back and how fortunate we are that they are back.  But there's a funny thing that can happen with people.  No, I don't think that this inability to get a product on the field in and of itself will cause fans to give up the game.  But I do think the accumulation of all that has gone on since 1994 just might cause a significant number of fans to walk away. 

Enough is enough.  People are tired of the sport doing its laundry in public.  People are tired of watching a boring sport with so little action.  People are tired of paying $5 for a water in the stadium, over $20 for parking and say over $200 for a family of four. 

People are also tired, generally, and many are broke.  And the last thing anyone needs when he is tired or broke is seeing millionaires fight with billionaires and have both groups expect him to care. 

He has much bigger problems than that. 

Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Associaton should take note.

Before they realize that the slope toward the cliff gets steeper and more slippery, and the friendly fans are not there in enough numbers to pull them away from it.