The baseball season is underway, sort of, and I’m riddled with guilt. I
feel
guilty there was no pre-season preview. I’m expected to know where Oral
Hershiser’s playing, what’s wrong with Johnny Oates’ wife, and can the
Rangers
possibly be as bad as they were last year? But the truth is, I don’t
care. My problems with baseball are not primarily political: Interest has
been
waning slowly over the last decade. Baseball is fighting the battle for
the
attention of a finite number of fans – in particular, young fans. It doesn’t have to lose this fight. The game
itself
is solid. This is what baseball needs to do to regain its edge and
maybe get me
back in its corner.
The game’s too long… Pretty insightful, huh? Two to
two-and-a-half
hours are tolerable, even for Type As like me. Criticism of the length
of a
game today always begins, “Kids today won’t sit still…” It’s got
nothing to
do with “kids today.” You think my grandpa wanted to spend the whole
day
sweltering in Sportsman’s Park? He had a life, too! Today, a baseball
game is
likely to take a stuporous four hours to complete. Why? Nothing’s
changed in
100 years – still three outs and nine innings – to explain any lengthening, let alone doubling the time of the game.
Umpires
refuse to call the strike zone as it’s clearly defined. Batters are
passive,
going deep into a count looking for a crowd-tingling walk. The game
drags.
Batters adjust their gonads after each pitch. Pitchers fiddle about on
the
mound like fussy old ladies meeting in the park to do some knitting.
The
umpires, for some reason, allow it to happen. Rules to keep the game
moving are
there: they’re simply not enforced….
Managers want Tony Kubek and Al Michaels to comment to the
nation about
their “field generalship.” To prove they understand a boy’s game,
managers stop
the game for 10 minutes to change pitchers, so a lefty can face a
lefty. Then,
they do it again, usually after the brilliant strategy blows up when a
kid
doubles, for his first big league hit. They hold up the game, again, to
bring
in a righty “playing the percentages,” says Al, up in the booth. The
pitcher
walks the guy, hitting .172, on four pitches. Forty-five minutes have
elapsed
and there are still only two outs. This is not an exaggeration. Make a
rule to
say a pitcher must face three batters….
Infielders, sub-groups of infielders, a sub-sub-group,
consisting of an
elderly, portly third base coach, a catcher, and a uni-lingual second
baseman
from Santo Domingo meet often out on the pitcher’s mound to discuss
events of
the day. They meet more frequently than the United Nations. Where’s the
coffee
and doughnuts? Eliminate these chit-chats….
Each time a pitcher throws a ball in the general direction
of a
batter’s body, what’s always referred to in baseball as a “melee”
breaks out.
Fat guys, skinny guys, muscle-bound guys, real old guys, all mucking
about.
It’s undignified and adds 25 minutes to the game. In hockey, they
heavily fine
everyone off the bench. Go one step further: Shoot the first
player who
charges the mound. I believe “melees” will wane….
A wee fellow, who’s stolen ten bases in his career, gets on
first and
the pitcher acts like Ty Cobb himself is 30 feet away. The frightened
pitcher
throws over to first 10 times. “Keeping the runner close,” says Tony
and then,
inevitably, walks the hitter. Or, on the 14th toss the
base-runner
easily steals second. You get five tosses over to first. If you make
one more
you get shot, too!….
Stop expansion!! There are not enough good athletes to stock
24 teams,
let alone 28. The point isn’t that Memphis or some other godforsaken
place has
a lot of bored people who’ll come watch. The point is, as the talent
level
becomes further depleted, no one outside of Memphis will turn the game
on….
Free agency: In basketball and, to a lesser extent football,
team’s
cores are kept intact. NBA teams don’t change much from year to year,
despite
free agency. In Dallas, you can bet Kidd, Jackson, and Mashburn will be
together for a long time. Football, with its huge rosters, sees more
confusing
movement, perhaps due to the anonymous nature of the equipment-laden
players.
Fans don’t care that much. Cowscum is Cowscum. Still, the basic cores
of teams
stay intact. This is not because of owners being nice folks. It’s
because of
the salary cap. Very few teams, good ones anyway, could sign a Young or
a Smith
and stay under the cap. An unexpected bonus: Fans can count on watching
the
same players each year. I, for one, don’t root for a uniform. I get
emotionally
involved in the personalities. As in real life, I’m slow to attach and
slower
to detach. I’m a Taurus. I don’t like change!
Of all sports, baseball seems the most injured by the wild – the strike was supposed to settle these issues – and capricious movement of players. It’s hard work keeping track of
who’s
playing for whom. I hate this. I work hard enough in real life. Reading
Sports Illustrated is supposed to be fun. Players and owners
must
realize, what’s good for them today is not necessarily good, in
the long
run, for the game.
Talk to me: coach36@aol.com
This article appears in May 12 • 1995 and May 12 • 1995 (Cover).