Baseball is a sport that was meant for entertaining people of a different time, when butter churning and hoop rolling were seen as legitimate past times. Quite simply, it just does not hold up now in 2014, when the other sports keep becoming better and better television products, while baseball languishes in the dark ages.
Recently, the MLB appointed a committee to look into new ways to speed up the pace of the game to which the baseball fans breathed in relief, “Finally!”
More steeped in tradition than any other sport, baseball has been adamant about refusing to budge an inch, while other sports have roared past it in popularity. Fifteen years after the NFL implemented replay challenges, the MLB finally had home run challenges last year, and safe/out challenges this year.
Fifteen years to use instant replay?
Baseball traditionalists have championed the importance of the “human element” at the expense of blowing easy calls that could have been easily rectified. Now that the MLB is mercifully realizing its anti-progressive attitude is killing the league with the younger generations, we can finally look into ways to make this old game a bit more streamlined.
Pitch Clock
This solution doesn’t require any fancy analytics system, tablets, or heart monitors. It only needs a digital play clock on the scoreboard. Football has a play clock, and basketball has a shot clock. There is no reason baseball can’t have a play clock to help the pace of the game along. The pitcher should have to throw the ball within 12 seconds of receiving the ball, with no one on base. If the average time for a pitcher to throw the ball is around 21 seconds, a play clock could save almost 10 seconds per pitch. The 12 second rule is already in place in the rulebook, but it is not enforced. Simply charge the pitcher with a ball for a delay of game and this problem will be resolved. Conversely, charge the batter with a strike if he takes too long with his pre-batting stance routine.
RISP Channel
Red Zone Channel has taught us that watching one, and even two games of the greatest spectator sport, football, is boring. Since that applies even more so to a slower sport, baseball needs to take a cue from Scott Hanson and Andrew Siciliano and adopt some sort of “Runners In Scoring Position” channel, which would just have whip around coverage every day from around the Majors, focusing on close games, and key situations.
Also, there has to be minimal commercials, as that is half of the Red Zone Channel’s appeal. Hanson even starts every broadcast with: “And now for seven hours of commercial free football.” The schedule is light on Mondays and Thursdays, but I believe it still would be more watchable than just watching the local game, and the ESPN Monday game. The reason that baseball has fallen out of the national conversation is that nobody cares about any other teams but their own. There’s no incentive to watch out of market games, even the nationally televised Sunday night game, because nobody knows any of the players.
If MLB puts the whole league on a suddenly more tightly packaged, and expedient RISP Channel, baseball fans might become invested in teams and players other than their own; and that would increase interest in the league overall.
Catcher and Pitcher Earpieces
To save precious seconds that the pitchers spend staring down the batter and shaking off signs, why not have the catchers and pitchers just have earpieces where they can just say the pitch to each other before the batter steps in the box?
They would have to speak soft, as to keep the batter unaware or use coded terms, but it would save so much time that is normally wasted on taking signs.
NFL quarterbacks have earpieces with their offensive coordinators to help make the communication process easier. Yes, you still see quarterbacks run to the sideline to get plays if they aren’t getting it by hand signal or earpiece, but they still have to get under that 35 second play clock. It breaks tradition, but the unwillingness to break tradition is why baseball has lost a generation.
Add some urgency to America’s old pastime!
The fact that they are trying to move in the right direction, with the new implementation of the pace of play committee is a good start, but let’s hope it’s not too little, too late.