A stadium-full of problems for Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball owners and its players association have settled their latest spat of millionaires fighting billionaires. America’s socalled pastime is scheduled to begin its 2022 season Thursday.
This agreement has allowed the games to commence, but the game itself still has a stadium-full of problems to address.
Don Mattingly, former baseball star and now manager of the Miami Marlin, said it best recently, “Baseball is unwatchable sometimes because nothing goes on.” For many, the “sometimes” could be eliminated from that quote.
Attendance at major-league parks dropped 33.9 per cent from 2019 to 2021. In 2008, more than 78 million fans attended games. In 2019, 68 million fans went to games.
Experts feel much of the negative attitude developing with the game of baseball can be traced back to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series over labour issues. That was the season the Montreal Expos were favourites to win it all. Baseball was gone from Montreal a decade later.
It took the steroid-infused homerun race in 2007 to have attendance return to the 1994 numbers. That was the year Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s home-run record.
For many fans, baseball games are too long. The average length of games have gone from two hours and 32 minutes in 1981 to three hours and two minutes in 2014. Much of that is caused by the twoplus minutes after each half-inning for commercials on television.
Other complaints from fans are more specific. Parking at Wrigley Field in Chicago costs $40. Hotdogs in some parks cost up to $12 and beer at a Blue Jays game in the Rogers Centre in Toronto costs up to $12, the most expensive in MLB.
The latest agreement between the players and owners addressed a few of the issues fans feel hurt the game. The designated hitter is now in for both leagues. The National League had the pitcher taking his turn at batting since 1973 when the American League introduced the designated hitter. Watching high-priced hurlers standing in the batter’s box more intent on protecting their hands and arms from injury than making contact with the ball was about as interesting as watching a pitcher pick up a resin bag.
Added to the agreement to compensate the owners are two more wild-card teams in the playoffs. Two issues mentioned but not changed are a time limit on pitchers to release the ball and larger bases.
The biggest issue not addressed is how boring games have become. Pitchers have become so strong they can regularly throw a ball over 100 m.p.h. Unfortunately, batters have not been able to adjust their reaction time, so strikeouts have increased. And watching a player flail at three fastballs is not overly exciting either.
To increase reaction time for batters and give them that extra millisecond to get the bat around, some baseball experts have mentioned moving the pitcher’s mound further away from home plate.
Traditional baseball fans apparently enjoy the game because, to them, it is more cerebral than actionable. They enjoy contemplating what each pitch might bring rather than the actual play when it happens. Obviously, that requires a much deeper understanding of the game than most fans are prepared to give it.
On the other hand, if baseball is to attract the new fans to games, it must find better ways to entertain them.
Football has run away from the other major sports by refining its game to add hype as well as action to the product it puts on the field.
Hockey and basketball have adjusted their games to meet the changing public interest, baseball has not.