I'm not sure I truly believe baseball really needs "saving", so claims made by the title of this post may be for imagination's sake only.
Rob Manfred, the new commish of baseball, has been bringing different ideas to the table to stem the erosion of the sport's popularity. The fan base has been skewing older and whiter as of late. Some ideas are on the table just to discuss, like the elimination of the shift. Not that I'm the most vocal purist, but eliminating the shift is ludicrous. Learn to lay down the bunt...
Creating urgency is now the driving desire of the Sports-Industrial Complex. In a world where live entertainment is so sought after, the importance of each of those live events is becoming paramount. The NFL has figured this out. MLB has yet to figure out how to make the marathon season into something more tasty for the young crowd.
Manfred talks about making games shorter. Maybe even lopping those extra 8 games and getting back to the "classic" 154 game schedule.
This conversation happened last night:
Me: So the new baseball commissioner is thinking of shortening the baseball season. Urgency's the name of the game now...
Corrie (in that way great wives listen and pay attention to shit they don't care about): Ooh really? How many games is he planing on taking?
Me: Eight.
Corrie: (Cute smile) Wow...that's it?
I rattled off a brief history of the 154-game schedule but trailed off. "What baseball really needs to do is..."
I then laid out a proposal that had been festering away in my imagination in an unformed state for too long. Maybe it had been the day spent slowly roasting in the sun at my master's graduation ceremony, marinated by the slow drip of scotch from my flask, or fullness of my belly with pork porterhouse and Pinot Noir, but at that moment last night the idea flowed from my brain through my mouth out to the ether.
I started by telling Corrie that what baseball needed to compete with the specter of its own past were changes far more radical than anything on the table.
I propose two separate regular seasons, one 90-110 games long, the other 30-40 games long with a two week break in the middle for All Star festivities. I propose that the two best teams from each league from the first, longer regular season (Season A) are put into a half a single-elimination bracket. The four best teams from Season B, two from each league that aren't the same as from Season A, will fill out the rest of the bracket. Those bracketed teams then play single elimination games for the right to represent their respective leagues in the best-of-seven World Series.
Why not exploit the randomness of small samples sizes? Imagine a team like the Marlins, knowing that if Jose Fernandez will be healthy by June or July, deciding to simply not risk bringing him back until later, knowing they only have to kick ass in the B season? How about a good team securing a spot in the post-season bracket from the A season then trying out all rookie squads for a while in Season B and get better at developing their own players? How about teams that only play for the shorter Season B?
Since baseball is ruled by statistics and numbers more so than any other American sport, think about leaving the stats for a year-in-year-out basis being the combined Seasons A and B--that way they'll at least resemble what we recognize.
Anything partly inspired by the '81 strike has to be mostly insane, but it's time to get radical. What type of prize could there be for wire-to-wire dominance? A bye? Maybe it should be the three best from each league each half, with byes for statistical juggernauts...
This will never happen, but it may be radical enough that if it were adopted, a new era of intrigue and urgency would be brought to the game.
