I for one, love everything about baseball. No changes are necessary to keep the purists coming back to the greatest game on earth. But this is an age of short attention spans, instant gratification and competition for the entertainment dollar. American League games can stretch into 4 hour mini-marathons. National Leagu games into a long game of relief pitching and pinch hitting match-ups.
The AL will never get rid of the designated hitter as long as there is a labor union. Taking 15 high paying jobs out of the game will never pass. It’s more likely that NL purists will be force fed the DH in our lifetime. Then we’ll have all games lasting longer than the Super Bowl every night in every city. You will also risk alienating the die-hard fans of both leagues. We actually enjoy the debate over whose league is better to watch. So, the answer to improving baseball has to lie within the play itself.
The answer is so simple and goes back to the roots of the game as it was intended. Call a strike a strike! Pitches that are below the arm pits and above the knees over the plate are a strike. Somewhere over the last 40 years, umps shrank the strike zone. It’s not a ball if the pitch is just over the belt. This can’t just be one or two umpires. It must be mandated and reviewed daily by the home office. They shrank the zone and added the DH to artificially add offense. When they did, they lengthened the game. Deeper counts and smaller strike zones are why the games now last so long now. Teams since the 1990’s Yankees, strategically take pitches all game long. This is to add base runners and drive the starters pitch count up. If strikes were called correctly, teams would have to become more aggressive and swing more often. Whether scoring or making outs, earlier swings equal quicker innings. It also makes for a more exciting game. As much as I love the game, sprinkling in walks all over the place can get dull even to the most loyal of baseball fans.
Along with the strike zone, there are plenty of other basics that need to be enforced by the umpires. Make the batter stay in the box and be ready for the pitch. Too many players have ridiculous rituals during their at-bats. Stepping out of the batter’s box and adjusting batting gloves and helmets before every pitch, and taking way too long to get the signal from the 3rd base coach. All these add up, including the length between innings. It’s the umpire’s job and responsibility to speed up the game and prevent these unnecessary delays.
There has been suggestions that baseball needs a pitch clock and a max number of times you can throw over to first to hold the runner. These are absurd. A max number would mean that once reached, the runner can take a giant lead. This would ruin the strategy of the game. A pitch clock is not needed. Besides, most pitchers prefer to work at a fast pace. Hitters have less time to think about what’s coming, and the defense stays alert.
The creators of baseball evolved a perfect game over the years. 90 feet to each base is just far enough and close enough to be fair for both sides. Nine defenders is the right amount of to make the game difficult, but, not impossible to reach safely. Along those lines, the original strike zone is the right size to be competitively even for both teams. It’s taken a long time for us to come back to square one. The dead ball era was too low scoring and the steroid era was too high. There has to be a happy medium and there is. The game was in it’s golden age in the 1950’s and 1960’s and the strike zone was on point. The games lasted about two hours, Roger Maris hit 61 home runs and it was America’s favorite pastime. The game is perfect at it’s purest form. It’s up to the commissioner’s office to bring us back to the basics that have been beloved for generations.
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