BRINGING BACK BASEBALL
It’s baseball time in America. The teams are back in Spring Training and before you 
know it the real season will be underway and will last for the next seven months.
The disturbing thing is that of all the professional sports in this country, baseball’s popularity seems to be waning. Professional football, basketball and hockey are rising in popularity, and professional soccer nobody really cares about anyhow, but poor baseball, once deemed the “National Pastime” is falling by the wayside.
I noticed it this last season while watching games on TV. Every game I watched featured teams playing to less than packed stadiums. My team, the Chicago White Sox was in first place for most of the season but played most of the games in a half-filled park. Of course it probably didn’t help that I watched the games on TV instead of going there but that’s neither here nor there.
Attendance at baseball games is not the only indicator of unpopularity, but the televised games don’t pull the same audience numbers that they used to. So let me address these two issues separately.
First, attendance is down at ballparks because it’s just too darn expensive. Baseball, as I remember it, was a family sport where you could afford tickets and hot dogs for the whole brood, but today, if you have more than 0 kids, it becomes an expensive proposition.
Not only are ticket prices through the roof, but you have to add on $25 to park, $4.50 for each hot dog, $8 for each beer, and if you want a souvenir, be prepared to take out a loan. Taking a family of three to the ball game used to be a matter of $50 but now it’s $3,509* (this is an estimate but I think I’m pretty close.)
So, if you want to get more people to the park, lower the ticket prices, keep the food prices commensurate to the same food purchased anywhere else, and stock some souvenirs that don’t require a credit check.
The other reason for baseball’s decline is that the game lasts too darn long. A basketball game takes two hours, a football game three, but baseball can take an eternity because there is no game clock involved. Baseball is a long game and long games cause us to fall asleep and lose interest, so to bring back baseball’s popularity I have proposed a few rule changes to make baseball a shorter yet more entertaining game.
HOW TO IMPROVE THE GAME OF BASEBALL
- An intentional walk is given by a wave of the hand. No need to throw four balls out of the strike zone. (time saved – 8 minutes.)
- The pitcher is allowed to throw at the batter if the catcher warns him first. (this is not designed to save time as much as it is entertaining for the spectator.)
- Any foul ball with two strikes is the third strike. (time saved: 9 minutes)
- The pitcher is on your own team. This way you know all of the balls will be right over the plate and hittable. Balls count as strikes.
- You only get 2 outs instead of three. This shaves off a third of the time right off the top.
- No stretch in the seventh inning. Everybody should just stretch when they need to, no organized stretching. Instead, in the seventh inning, one player stands on second base and hits fungos up into the crowd for two minutes. A real crowd pleaser.
- Put in a slaughter rule. Just like in intramural softball, if one team gets ahead by 10 or more runs, the game is over.
- A tie is a tie. No extra innings. The winner is determined by an old fashioned Home Run Derby. (time saved: Anywhere from 30 minutes to hours)
- If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out. (time saved: 13 minutes)
- Add cheerleaders and time always passes quicker.
If you have any ideas for improving and shortening the game of baseball, please let me know at justjoking@aol.com or on Facebook, Dale Irvin.
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