How to improve baseball

It's no secret that baseball, once THE national sport, has slipped dramatically in popularity in recent decades. This is due partly to the equally dramatic rise in popularity of NFL Throwball, saturation coverage of which asphyxiates coverage of everything else. But Major League Baseball's (MLB) wounds are largely self-inflicted.

Some people complain that MLB's wage structure makes it uncompetitive. The success in recent years of low-budget teams like Colorado and Tampa Bay shows that a properly managed club can win. Similarly, the spectacular failure of high budget teams like the Yankees and Mets shows that money is no guarantee of success. Of the 10 teams with the highest wage bill this year, only half made the playoffs. And despite this complaint, which is more conventional wisdom than backed up by the facts, baseball remains one of the most unpredictable leagues. The last nine seasons including this one will see eight different teams win the World Series. The last 11 National League pennants have been won by 10 different teams.

But MLB's biggest problems are elsewhere.

1) Shorten the games. This can be done without fundamentally changing the game. All that needs to happen is for MLB to adopt the amateur baseball rule whereby a batter is not allowed to step out of the batter's box after a caught pitch. Baseball games take forever. Playoff games even more so. I can't watch a baseball game on TV from start to finish any more. I flip to other channels and then back to the game. If a game's going to last four and a half hours, it ought to be because there's a lot of action, not because players waste half of it standing around picking at various body parts. Baseball is renown for its "deliberative" nature. But there's a fine line between "deliberative" and "interminable." Spending 40 seconds watching a batter step out of the box, readjust both batting gloves, readjust his helmet, readjust his crotch, spit on the ground, rub his hands with dirt and amble back into the box isn't especially appealing to me. And it's even less appealing at 11:52 PM on a work night of a game that still has several innings to go. Just get on with it already!

2) Call the strike zone as the rule book says. The strike zone is supposed to be from the letters to the knees. Most umpires have a strike zone that runs roughly from the top of the belt buckle to the bottom of the belt buckle. A larger strike zone makes players swing the bat, which is what people want to see. Fans won't mind the length of game time if they're watching actual action. Ever watch college or Little League games? Umps call strikes. Batters swing the bat. Action occurs.

3) Start playoff games at 7:00 or 7:30 PM eastern time. This, combined with the game shortening changes listed above, will make it so that games get over at a not totally ludicrous hour. The most important games of the season, the games that MLB wants the public to care about most, are ending after midnight ET and later on work and school nights. I think one of the Tampa Bay-Boston games ended at like 12:40 am... and that was for a 9-inning contest! And MLB's braintrust is absolutely mystified why both ratings and interest keep falling. DUH! Yes, such a start time might make it so fans in the western time zones miss the first few innings. But I'd rather miss the first few innings than the last few innings. If you want fans to care about your game, make it so as many as possible can see the most gripping moments.