While maybe today’s game is baseball like it ought to be to
some, it sure ain’t baseball like it used to be.
Maybe I am getting old but over the years, teams that scored
runs on outs, played defense, ran the bases well, and bunted – won.
Teams that struck out more than they got hits, couldn’t
catch the ball, and had to carry 12 or more pitchers on their staff - lost.
When just about every player in your starting lineup strikes
out over 100 times a year and hits about 15 solo home runs – moving runners
over, sacrifices, manufacturing runs, complete games by starting pitchers have
all become lost arts.
Has this made baseball more marketable?
Attendance is down. Eric
Fisher of Sportsbusiness.com reported that Major League Baseball had its worst
attendance in sixteen years in 2019.
And the audience is aging. As I noted before per a 2017
MarketWatch article: “Baseball has the oldest viewers of the top major
sports, with 50% of its audience 55 or older…The number of people between the
ages of 7 and 17 playing baseball in the U.S. decreased by 41% from 9 million
in 2002 to 5.3 million in 2013.”
It has to be because the games take too long, right?
Baseball responds by not making pitchers
throw four balls for intentional walks.
Still, the average game time still went up to 3 hours 10 minutes in 2019
from 3 hours 4 minutes in 2018.
Now in this shortened season, MLB will be making more
changes, 3 batter minimum for each pitcher used, the universal DH, and…the
runner-on-second rule for extra innings.
Now here is a shocker from an old school baseball lover – I like
the runner-on-second rule to start extra innings.
What? Someone
actually likes this hokey attempt to try and generate interest in the game?
Yes. I do. I have seen it in action in the minor leagues
and it works.
Because as crazy as it may seem, this rule forced minor
league teams the last two years to play small ball in extra innings. As soon as the inning starts, with the man on
second, the team at-bat bunts the runner over to third. Then, they try to score them by…get this…having
the batter shorten their swing…and put the ball in play! Shocking!
Shortening the swing and not trying to hit a home run with every swing? It’s Un-American! Where this this crazy idea come from?
John McGraw
I think, who some credit with inventing small ball.
So, this crazy, hokey idea of starting extra innings with a
man on first works. Of course, a better
alternative would be teams to play small ball all the time, make the game more
exciting, and maybe reverse baseball downward attendance trend and upward age
of their fanbase.
Until then, this may be the best small ball lovers get.
11 comments:
I am not sure baseball... or golf... can attract the 14-19 year old teckkies out there under any condition.
They simply live in a different world.
Start a 10th with a man on second and McNeil up? Like those odds.
I wonder how baseball attendance demographics have gone. Inner city blacks gravitate to Hoops and blacks in football ? Huge too. Baseball? I sometimes wonder how many Willie Mays and Hank Aaron types we’ll never see because they did not take up the game.
It's like we've come full cycle over the past 75 years. Until 1947, blacks were not allowed to play ML baseball, and now in growing numbers they are choosing not to.
And so the world turns... 🤔
Bill
As well as anglo browns.
Baseball is a way to get out of their home country but they turn to other sports, like soccer, in school.
I'm not afraid to embrace change. Let's start with the ownership.
This is a big baseball chance to tap into inner city athletes, given the times we live in to do something more. Will they do it? It would only help their product.
I hate soccer - boring to watch. Almost never any scoring. Hockey has more excitement. If I made the rules, I'd make the soccer goals 10 feet wider and 2-3 feet taller. Increase scoring by doing so.
For a while, around 1980, there was an indoor soccer league with a team that played home games at Nassau Coliseum. Lots of action, lots of scoring, and a lot of fun to watch.
Unfortunately, it died. 😞
I think Shemp Messing was even the Goalie for a bit on that team.
Baseball is on a ventilator because of the lack of a sandlot. The sandlot has gone in part because of lack of unrestricted-access facilities, but mostly from over-regimentation by an adult community that prizes schedule over spontaneity.
Basketball thrives because there is a foundation of the pick-up game, three-on-three, H.O.R.S.E. When was the last time you saw 6 kids playing pepper?
Pepper spray, yes, pepper no.
I think Shep was.
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