Throughout the 1920s and 30s and the days of Babe Ruth, to the 56 game hitting streak of Joe Dimaggio, a record that has yet to be broken, baseball was the rightful king of sports in the United States. In 2002, scandal rocked the sport as a number of top players past and present had been outed for using steroids.
Since then, the sport has been at a steady decline and football has taken the top spot. There are many reasons for this. The TV product for football with the advent of replay angles and HD has become so good that the NFL has trouble getting people to the stadiums. Baseball has trouble with both getting people to the stadiums and getting them to watch the games on TV. There are four different solutions that have been discussed that I believe could turn the fortunes of baseball.
Baseball should have a pitch clock, this has been discussed by MLB officials and the NCAA. Each MLB at bat, after every pitch, the batters step out of the batters box and adjust their batting gloves or hits the bottom of their cleats with their bat for no reason. By the time the batter is ready for a pitch, the pitcher steps off of the rubber and it seems like minutes between pitches. By adding a pitch clock, say for 20 seconds it would cut that time at least in half, it would shorten games and by doing so get a younger audience.
Another option is to shorten the season. Have you ever heard the expression “it’s not a sprint, but a marathon?” baseball isn’t a marathon, it’s like six marathons. The season is 162 games long, there is no sense of urgency, when teams play 28 of 30 days in a month there’s nothing that tells a viewer that they have to tune in today because they play again the next day. If you shorten the season by half, they will only play three day per week, making the games feel more like a must see event.
If they choose not to shorten the season, shorten the games. Instead of playing one nine inning game, play two seven inning games. Not only would it reduce travel for teams but it would also make the games more of a “chess match” as managers would have to decide how they were going to throw their pitchers because you would have only one bullpen to go through two games.
The final idea to get more attention to baseball is to shorten the strike zone. The strike zone is typically from the knees to the elbows, by going from knees to elbows to waste to elbows, it would cause more walks or cause more hits. Either way, you would get more baserunners and more baserunners would equal more exciting plays.
The most likely of these to happen is a pitch clock, but no matter which solution baseball takes, something needs to happen before baseball falls into obscurity.
