Is Baseball doomed?

Great Debates
61

Nixon has hit upon a very important point, one that I think is hurting baseball. The length of games and the two primary reasons for it - A) batters who leave the batter’s box and pitchers who walk around the infield after every pitch; and B) the difficulty umpires seem to have with calling a uniform strike zone.

Nothing is more maddening to me, watching the game these days, than the number of strikes that are not called. I would say they average about 20-30 a game. And that isn’t taking into account the high, at-the-letters strike, which has gone the way of leaving your glove in the field at the half-inning. Also bothersome is some umpires who will call a pitch clearly 6-8 inches outside a strike, because that’s “their zone.”

It always amuses me to hear elitists talk about the lack of quality pitchers today. Call the strike zone as it is written in the rule book, and POOF! Pitching is instantly much better, across the board.

There is no easy solution for the problem, I recognize. Pitcher’s breaking stuff is so fast and so nasty today, it’s understandably hard for an umpire to catch every ball that as it crossed the plate was a strike and instantly make the correct call.

I thought about some kind of a system using video that would be similar to the format used for judging boxing in the last Olympics. Have an umpire behind the plate; one monitoring the centerfield camera and one monitoring the camera view from directly over the plate. Two out of three is the call, ball or strike. This would require some kind of red-light, green-light signal, so that the call would be INSTANTANEOUSLY known.

Hold off on those attacks. I, too, recognize the idea is crap. It would affect strategy on two-strike and full-count pitches. The home plate umpire could be embarrasingly shown up as he rings a player up on a strikeout, only to find the two video judges overrule. It just wouldn’t wash.

I’d like to see something done, though. This “every umpire has his own strike zone, and you better learn it” stuff is ridiculous.

62

An exageration, to be sure. I have been attending White Sox games for over 35 years, and these purported neighborhood safety problems are mostly urban legends. Sure, there have been isolated incidents were people leaving Sox games late at night have had trouble with locals. My bet is it isn’t any worse than any other ball park set in a residential area. The incident mentioned involving the radio announcer was blown out of proportion by the “victim,” (one of the biggest, most pompous asses in sports talk radio history) so I take it with a grain of salt.

63

Baseball games take longer now because they’ve lengthened the breaks between innings to fit in more commercials. That’s eighty percent of the increase right there. You won’t hear the owners admit it, of course.

And really, you hear this complaint a lot, but how many fans really care if the game takes 2:35 or 2:55? I don’t.

64

I wrote:
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They had to trade Shawn Green for Raul Mondesi because Green was going to be a free agent and the Dodgers were willing to put him out of Toronto’s price range to get him.
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Rick Jay wrote:
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Which isn’t true.
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Dude, they made him the fourth highest-paid player in the history of the game! Mondi’s contract was restructed to something like 4 years, 45 million whereas Green got six at 85 million with a huge signing bonus. The Dodgers going from $11 million (Mondi) to $14 million (Green) isn’t so bad, but considering Toronto was paying the guy around two a season, well, that kind of shows up on the books at the end of the year. =) If there was a cap the Dodgers couldn’t continue their irresponsible spending and if the Jays had a chance to put a franchise tag on Green we could have at least had him for this year.
(I hear you on Fregosi, though… I think Ash just wanted a guy whose whereabouts were certain during Nam.)

65

“My bet is it isn’t any worse than any other ball park set in a residential area.”

I would be VERY surprised if the yuppies that live in Wrigleyville display overt hostility to “outsiders” coming into “their” neighborhood before and after Cubs games.

66

Not in Seattle… We have SafeCo field.
… oh, wait. I thought the title was ‘Is Baseball DOMED?’

:smiley:

67

On a more serious note… A few years ago Fox got NHL hockey and put some sort of receiver in the puck that allowed ot to be tracked on the ice… How about something similar in a baseball? That, plus a computer generated graphic ‘strike zone’ so people could see whether the ball was inside or outside (with the state of technology these days, it couldn’t be THAT hard). A few games with that on, and I bet the calling would clear itself up REAL quick.

68

Yea, right. And there’s no crime in Wrigleyville either. That is, if you don’t count the Cubs themselves.

Seriously, the incident in question, involving the WMVP radio personality, was probably a case of a loud mouthed sportscaster mouthing off to a crowd of teenagers after having too much beer at the ballpark. I don’t condone the fact that the youths may have roughed him up, but this does not equal gangs of thugs roaming bridgeport looking for suburban based Sox fans to beat the snot out of. Bridgeport is a lower middle class family nieghborhood. The crime rate thier is no higher than the area around Wrigley field. In fact, probably less, seeing as there is a decided lack of night life around Comiskey. The issue of locals and “overt hostility,” at least as aimed at Sox fans, is certainly a fable.

69

Yes, it showed up as costing the Blue Jays $9 million MORE. Remember, Green was under contract for 2000; they consciously decided to trade up, spending far more in 2000 in return for A) a guaranteed player beyond 2000 and B) saving some money. They could have opted to simply play out Green’s last year (which, to be honest, is what I would have done, since I think Mondesi’s pretty much just a replacement-level player and isn’t worth a contract) and saved tens of millions, then solved their right field hole this year.

Mondesi’s contract was already 4 years, $45 million. I don’t know if it was restructured, but the total payout’s the same.

There WERE cheaper options, Bobby Higginson being an obvious example, so if the Jays were looking to save money, why did they get the guy making $11 million a year when equivalent ballplayers were available for a fraction of the price?

It’s important to understand; they DID have him for this year. Green was under contract.

Bear in mind that their offer to Green was for less money per year than they accepted with Mondesi’s contract.

What this illustrated, getting back to the OP, is that it’s not a simple matter of “some teams have money and some don’t” that determines winners and losers.

The Blue Jays managed to put themselves out $45 million for a very average outfielder who gets them no closer to a pennant despite having cheaper options available, and they did that for reasons entirely related to A) politics, B) sheer panic, C) typical short-sightedness and D) a tactical weakness in the organization (undervaluing plate discipline.) They can sure as hell AFFORD good players. As their love of the likes of Alberto Castillo and Roy Halladay proves, they just don’t know a good ballplayer when they see one. Here we have a ballclub making what is allegedly a salary-based move, STILL blowing forty million simoleons, and coming out with an inferior player. Huh?

70

I have never been to Comiskey Park, so I m utterly unqualified to judge whether the perceived safety of the neighborhood affects the WHite SOx’ attendance.

However, I grew up in New York and took the subway to Yankee games in the South Bronx all the time. The area around Yankee Stadium certainly wasn’t wonderful, but the truth is, people who went to Yankee Stadium for a game were in no danger! There were tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of cops around. What mugger in his right mind would try to attack me under THOSE circumstances?

No, the SOuth Bronx was never dangerous for white folks who came for a few hours to see a game. It was dangerous for the poor black folks who had to live there year round! Call it a hunch that the same is true of Comiskey Park and most other “bad” urban areas where stadiums are located. It’s the poor minority folks who live there all year who have to worry about crime- not the sports fan who drops by on game day.

71

As a tourist, I’ve been to Comiskey, Yankee, and Shea Stadiums. No problems whatsoever on the trains getting there. They didn’t feel dangerous.

Living in SoCal, I’ve been to the Sports Arena and Coliseum which are supposedly in “bad” areas. They has never been a problem at those facilities.

Baseball is doomed to a certain extent now that we will have to read a lot of self-congratulatory stories by the New York media about this year’s World Series.

There might be a work stoppage in 2002, that will be important.

72

I am a huge baseball fan but I do think baseball has to make some major changes to avoid major problems in the next 10 years or so… The problem is the game faces an increasing amount of competition for the consumer’s entertainment dollar. To give an example: I live in Montreal, where the Expos’ problems are well-documented, a city where baseball was very popular until about 1987. Since then, the city has added countless attractions, including the Jazz festival, Just for Laughs, a zillion hi-tech movie theaters and son on. Thus, tourism has increased tremendously but baseball doesn’t figure on most tourists: to-see lists. same goes for the locals. A few years ago, the entertainment options were far fewer.

Secondly, something must be done about the length of the games! during the current playoffs, 9-inning games go on for four hours! In our fast-paced world, that’s way too long…

Last but not least, the owners can’t seem to agree on any kind of expanded revenue-sharing, despite the fact that the NFL is thriving with such a system…

73

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I heard that there is no TV coverage of Expo games anymore? If so, that would probably hurt attendance more than any of the factors you mentioned. And it would definitely hurt revenue.

True, but the owners don’t want to shroten it TOO much. Why? Shorter games mean they sell fewer over-priced souvenirs ($25 for a t-shirt??? $22 for a cap???) and less over-priced, watered-down beer ($5.50 for a 12-ounce beer???), especially in parks where they are required by law to stop sales after the 7th or 8th inning.

74

evilnick88:

I believe that revenue sharing is similar in MLB and the NFL ( though I am not a baseball expert ). Visiting teams share in the gate and the national TV and merchandising are shared equally amongst the franchises. Teams keep the money from local broadcasting in both leagues. The difference is in the number of games. Football is played once a week instead of 4 or 5 times. This heightens the importance of the national TV deal. In MLB the local deal can bring in more money than a team’s share of the national TV contract. The Yankees have to be pulling in over $100 million on local cable deals whereas their share of the national pie can’t be anywhere near that high.

In the NFL, the only games left unsold on a national basis are 4 preseason games ( teams can play a special fifth game but these are televised nationwide ). The money brought in by them is much less than each gets from the huge FOX, CBS, ABC, and ESPN deals. The Cincinati Bungles actually have to pay a local TV station to air their exhibition games.

MLB doesn’t need NFL style revenue sharing.
They need a system that fits their revenue sources.

75

That’s easily the worst excuse for Expos attendance I’ve ever read. :slight_smile: Yes, there are other things to do in Montreal. Of course, there are fifty times as many things to do in New York, and the Yankees draw okay, and there’s NOTHING to do in Cleveland and the Indians draw great.

The Expos’ woes have nothing to do with Montreal and everything to do with the Expos, who are easily the worst-run franchise in baseball and arguably the worst-run since the 1950’s Kansas City A’s. Claude Brochu ran the team into the ground by pissing off his partners, decided to stop marketing the team, and made tactical blunders-a-plenty. Teh team publicly whines and bitches about its stadium, which is admittedly terrible, but can you imagine advertising a restaurant by saying “Come on down to Chez Claude, the place really sucks!”?

The Expos made a conscious and publicly stated decision in 1996 to stop trying to win because they could make money anyway by pocketing the luxury tax money. And THEN the attendance REALLY dropped, and they wonder why.

76

Damn Yankees.

77

AMEN.

78

According to this ESPN article, the subway series was the lowest rated series in the TV HISTORY of the GAME. America may well be turned off to the game.

I think we may se a change in the way baseball is run. Whether that change will be good or bad…

79

The low ratings were almost certainly due to the fact that it was New York versus New York. Those outside New York couldn’t care less. Those inside New York probably didn’t care much either, 'cause their city was gonna win no matter what.

80

The ratings were low because the first pitch usually wasn’t thrown until 8:30 PM. It’s ridiculous to expect people to hang in for 3-4 hours on a weeknight.

Oh yeah, YAY YANKEES!