Historical September–October 2019 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Been to a baseball game lately? Do you avidly watch MLB games on the tube? Probably not. Cardinal Nation may be an exception – for now – but baseball has a problem.
An item in the May 31 St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes “Major League Baseball’s overall average of 26,854 through Wednesday is 1.4 percent below the similar point last season, which wound up below 30,000 for the first time since 2003” and “The average attendance peaked at 32,785 in 2007.” From what I’ve seen, the 32,000 must include empty seats and squirrels. Baseball was invented in 1869, and just about everything else from that era is dead: horse-drawn carriages and the Republican Party, for example. Baseball was popular until 2000, but then electronic games flourished, and attention spans diminished. (Bush #43 became president, too, and that began the spiraling death of the Republican party.) Baseball is too slow to compete with the NBA, Minecraft, or Button Mash.
When I am at a game, I can hear the synchronized snoring in the stands by the seventh inning (and I have bad hearing).
To be fair, from my perspective, that slow pace is an attraction because I can read while “watching” the game.
If something exciting happens (a rarity), the crowd noise or the announcers yelling cause me to allow me to watch the replay. Baseball’s big wigs (a technical term, not a fashion statement) have worked to speed up the game. There’s now a 20 second time limit between pitches, an intentional pass is announced rather than requiring four pitches, and next year a pitcher will be required to face a minimum of three batters, reducing the time-consuming transition from pitcher A to pitcher B (or in late innings, pitcher G to pitcher H).
There have even been discussions of starting every extra-inning game with a man on second base.
These ideas are steps in the right direction but they’re baby-steps.
They won’t entice kids to put down their smart-phones or stop watching Stephen Curry shoot 3-pointers from North Dakota. Fortunately, once again, just like in the contest to create new permutations of bacon ice cream, Hawkeye comes to the rescue!
He – I mean I – offers strategies to make baseball faster and more interesting. 1. Why nine? NPR says, “The average nine-inning baseball game took 3 hours and 8 minutes. That’s up from 2 hours and 46 minutes in 2005.” I’m not a mathematician but there’s a good chance that games would be quicker if they were only five innings. There’s nothing sacrosanct about nine. 2. Just one.
In my wild and semi-crazy youth, I played in a one-ball softball tournament. That didn’t mean we only had one spheroid (love that word!), but that every better came to the plate with a 3-2 count.
There might be a couple of foul balls, but it sure sped up the game.
It was great fun and we could get to the post-game bar earlier. (Alas, I was much better at the bar than on the field.) Beyond making the game move faster, Hawkeye has suggestions about how to make the game more interesting. Hint: More scoring is a good thing. 3. Gloveless. Players are prohibited from wearing a glove.
There would be many more hits and broken fingers, and we all like to watch an accident taking place.
If gloves are allowed, they should at least be vibrant colors. 4. Fielding Roulette.
Each fielder’s cap has an electronic button that receives signals from the giant vertical roulette wheel near the scoreboard, featuring eight slices, one to indicate each fielder except the catcher.
As the pitcher winds up to throw, the wheel begins to spin, and as the ball heads to the plate, the wheel lands on a slice indicating a player, the button in his cap buzzes, and that player is frozen until the next pitch.
He can only catch a ball if it is near enough that he can do so by moving one leg. No one will know which player is frozen until the pitch is hit, so it will always be a frenzy: Does the ball go near the stationary player?
If so, someone else will have to get there to field it because Mr. Stationary is immobile until the next pitch.
This features chance, unpredictability, and tragedy, the great American popularity formula (think of the political conventions!). 5. Rotate the compass. What if the base-running route was changed for every-other batter? Instead of everyone hitting the ball and running to the right, to first base, and then going left to second, left to third, and then left to home, what if half of the batters first ran to the left after hitting the ball, going to third base, and then right to second, to first, and to home? Think of the excitement on the base paths with batters on first and third, and a ball is hit.
The runner on first goes to second, while the runner on third also goes to second.
If it’s an extra base hit, they continue running in opposite directions, maybe meeting at home.
As I type this, I’m confused, so I can’t imagine a shortstop knowing what to do. Yep, this offers more chance, unpredictability, and tragedy (surely the runners will collide, more accidents and tragedy), so it’s a winning formula! 6. Co-ed. You may have noticed that I kept referring to HE and HIM.
But why? Sure, guys are often bigger and throw harder and hit farther, but many of these changes value brains over brawn, and Hawkeye knows the smarts hierarchy, so women would be extra valuable.
Each team would be half-female with four or five women on the field. Baseball would be more attractive to young girls, and although I’m not a mathematician, that’s probably about half of the population. OK, there you have it: Dr. Hawkeye’s recipe for saving Major League Baseball. Next month I will offer sage recommendations for revising political debates, funerals, and the lines at Ted Drewes.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 2019.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2019_09.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 5.
