7 Ways to Fix Baseball

Putting more money in the RBI program is a good thing.

It’s clear in this country that Football is the National Pastime. It never used to be that way but a lot of selfish people have ruined a once great game with their own self serving interests. Certainly football is headed that way but it’s a shame that baseball is not wholly more likeable than it once was. But I’d love to see it get back to the way it was so I have comprised a list of things baseball can do to become a better sport. Most of them are hard but all of them are doable in time and with a little care and focus.

So let’s see how our once National Pastime can get it’s groove back.

Keep It Clean
It appears baseball is right on track to keeping the sport steroids free. At the very least the stats are fooling fans into thinking it , so it’s paramount for baseball to not just keep testing but advance the testing. They need to be at the forefront of HGH testing the way football was at the head of the steroids testing. The more people can believe the reality of what they are seeing the more than will fall in love with baseball all over again.

Fine Teams for Slow Play
Occasionally the game can run long. Big scoring games can really put the games over the 3 hour mark but so much of baseball is slowing things down. In this day and age people need to see things happening quickly. They need to see the action or they bored and interested in something else. Have an independent committee fine teams if they feel like their play was slow. Fine them and donate the money to youth sports.

Invest More Money Into Youth Programs
The reality is this: you make the most money when America is the most interested. The only way for people to care is when they have their own homegrown talent. Foreign born players have American fans too but there is something that is far more appealing in rooting in one of your own. So take more money to keep kids playing baseball and helping them get to the pro level . This will only increase the popularity of the sport.

Bring Back the Doubleheader
This was one of the great time honored traditions in baseball: the weekend double header. Give teams the day off on Friday, then let them play a double header on Saturday and Sunday. This gives fans a chance to enjoy twice the baseball on the same day. Give fans a chance to attend both games at a discount. That’s an experience fans have long forgotten about.

Salary Cap Minimum
Allow the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Cubs, and Mets the choice to spend more money than the Royals have ever seen but make sure that every team is spending at least a 60 million minimum. This should help to restore some of the competitive balance that baseball is lacking. And if a team cant find a way to spend 60 million on their baseball team then it might be time to think about getting rid of the team all together.

Make Interleague Play Like Football
Instead of saying the NL Central is going to play the AL West this year just do it like football does. If you were the first in your division the previous year you have to face the first place teams of the other league as well as your geographical rival. This would help to keep interleague play from being lopsided. And stop worrying about scheduling all the games in the same two week period. Play them as they come in the schedule.

No More All Star Home Field Advantage
The home field should go to the team with the best record in the World Series. That’s it. This way it will still give teams who have wrapped up the divison by early September something to play for.
There is no way that baseball will ever be a perfect sport, but these changes can make it a more enjoyable one.

Mike Cahill

Comments

7 Responses to “7 Ways to Fix Baseball”

Panda on August 6th, 2010 12:52 pm

8. have video play back enabled so that when the idiot referees make biased, unfair and down-right stupid calls they can be held accountable.

No one wants to watch injustice, no one wants to watch an undeserving team beat the true winners because the referee has a stick up his arse.

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bigyaz Reply:
August 6th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
@Panda: Yeah, unlike you the umpires (not “referees”, which indicates your deep knowledge of baseball) are totally biased and out to screw YOUR team.

Basketball has at least 5-10 horrible calls a game. Would you like to see replay there, too? That sure would make the game a lot more fun.

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chris on August 6th, 2010 1:13 pm

Theese changes will do nothing overall. the simple fact remains that a few teams stand on top of the league and year after year they sign top talent and out spend the rest of the league.

Something has to be done to make teams more competitive. for starters a salary cap maybe, or at least stop the yanks from spending way over everyone else. Also allow more teams to make the post season. as it is now too many teams are glorified farm teams. they draft players, work them into the league and show them off against teams liek boston and new york. then when its contract time the yanks out bid everyone. Teams like toronto and pittsburg are never going to get better.

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Jim on August 6th, 2010 1:29 pm

As I live in Pittsburgh and am a Yankee fan (Pirates fan too), I get to see the top and the bottom of the MLB every year. The problems you listed here are all valid, and the simple solutions you offered up are good except the salary min cap idea. The reason is simple and can be explained in the context of the U.S. minimum wage…

Increasing the minimum a team must spend will also increase the maximum other teams are willing to spend. In stead of shifting talent from higher-paying teams to the lower paying teams, the wealthier teams would be paying more for the same talent, so would the lower-paying teams like Pittsburgh. When the salaries go up in a small-market team like Pittsburgh, so do ticket prices. When ticket prices go up, attendance drops. It just wouldn’t work…

Other things needed to fix baseball:

1. Remove Selig from the commissioner’s office. From a purist’s perspective – which I have, nobody has been worse for baseball than Bud Selig during his tenure. Nobody gained more from the use of steroids than Selig himself, and when pressure came from congress to ban substances, he looked like a hero because he helped make the rules. He’s been playing both sides of the fence for a while.

2. Stop babying pitchers. 100 pitch counts and the rigorous structure around pitchers and prospects has made the modern pitcher into a hurler capable of throwing near 100 MPH fastballs, but only for 5-6 innings every 5 days. In days past, pitchers could light up the radar gun and pitch on 2-3 days rest because their arms were stronger over the course of a season or career.

3. Lose the DH in the AL. Being an AL fan, I love AL-style baseball, so I feel a bit hypocritical in saying so, but the DH takes an element out of the game.

4. Get rid of instant replay. Yes, I said it. Instant replay removes the human element from the umpiring of a game. Do they make awful calls? Sure, sometimes. But let’s face it, 99.9% of the time, the umpires are on the call. And the law of averages says that for every bad call going against you, there will be one for you… There is no time limit in baseball; a game can legitimately go on all night before an outcome is decided. It’s the only sport like that… keep the human element in it.

5. Rather than forcing a salary min cap, put stipulations into the franchising agreements about being competitive. Levy fines or sanctions against teams’ owners who fail to perform. Make them steep. There is no doubt that Pittsburgh could be doing more to put winning teams on the field than they are. It’s a shame MLB (and Selig specifically) will let Pirates ownership profit the way they do while in the midst of the most dubious record-setting time frame in pro sports history…

6. Play playoff and World Series games earlier. Game telecasts start at 8:00pm now… By the time the first pitch is tossed, it could be 8:30-8:40pm (EST). What about the kids?! I don’t let my kids stay up late enough to watch the end of most prime time games… They lose interest in the sport as a result. Even ages after the night game came along, WS and playoff games were played in the daylight; I see no reason baseball can’t do it like that again (except but for marketing and raking in more $$$… sad)

I’m not attacking your list – just saying there are more than 7 things MLB needs to do to improve baseball.

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7 Ways to Fix Baseball - lezspeaks's posterous on August 7th, 2010 4:24 pm

[...] So lets see how our once National Pastime can get its groove back…Source:http://thedugoutdoctors.com/2010/08/7-ways-to-fix-baseball/ [...]
Jed on October 15th, 2010 7:08 pm

I’m not a true knowledgeable baseball fan but this is what I would do:

1) Shorten the regular season so that it ends by 2nd week of August

2) Playoffs and World Series is over by end of 2nd week of September

3) Rotate the World Series year by year or every two years interesting
destinations like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta
Chicago –if they had a dome.
Think about it, a Las Vegas World Series every 2 or 4 years.
I don’t care about gambling and game fixing; didn’t that happen over 100
years ago.

4) Modify the scoring so that a base hit is worth maybe a quarter point. 2 bases
is worth half a point. A home run is worth 1 point. This would assure we have a
probable winner after nine innings of play.

5) End all games in 9 innings. If it’s tied then so be it. That will encourage teams to score more to avoid ties. Except for the World Series and maybe the playoffs. Use the current extra innings scheme for the WS.

6) Time clock for pitching. Like football. A pitch should always be going across
the plate by some set time after the pitcher takes the mound.

7) Include more teams in the playoffs and seed them–I think that’s the term– similar to the the Final Four. I wish football would do this too. Sports and casual
fans like to see the best teams meet for Championships not the best team of
both sides + the best team from the other weaker side.

Well that’s what I think. Maybe I’ll send this to the MLB. :>)

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