Boxing- All the politics, no governing body exists over the sport, way too many outrageous decisions. Too many championship belts, too many weight divisions. There are 17 weight classes in boxing, with 4 major titles each. So at any time there could be 68 different “champions”.
There used to be 8 weight classes with 1 champion each. Only 8 men in the world were considered the best and everyone knew who they were. At least in the higher weight classes that people found the most interesting. Now, no one knows what’s going on.
For Soccer: Turn it into a drinking game. Every time a team is awarded a corner kick, the opposing goal tender should be required to take a shot. Would probably result in more scoring as the game wears on.
In 1926 the Yankees and the St. Louis Browns played a double header in less than 2 and a half hours. Now the Browns were not so great but they did have 2 Hall of Famers (though one is for football) but Murderer’s Row? Under 2:30 for 2 games?
Baseball:
No batting gloves; no timeouts for the batter
Allow baseball home team to show whatever replays they want; why should fans at home get to see a replay of a great or close play several times and fans at park see it live or not at all? If fans cannot control themselves eject them.
Mine is similar to this. Personally I don’t care which way they go on the DH; just choose one! Regarding the All-Star Game; I don’t want it to be meaningless. I kind of like the current format where the winning team gets home field advantage for the World Series; and since it is an “all-star” game, I fell that by definition an “all-star” play is defined by his perception from the fans point of view. Therefore, I’m in favor in continuing the fan voting.
I could get behind most of these changes. In Jr. Olympic Fast Pitch Competition there are a number of rules that address the items above; that I think would be a good rule to add to MLB.
Batters must keep one foot in the box between pitches. Obviously they can step out when a wild pitch is thrown but basically if you’re out of the box dicking around, you can have a strike called on you. Similarly if a pitcher is extremely slow in delivering a pitch, a ball can be called.
I can’t agree so much on your #2 above. There’s a lot of strategy to pitching changes. If you add the other changes; the pitching changes won’t be too bad.
I agree. You get 90 seconds between innings or I call a ball on the batter. Every 30 seconds is another ball for the batter. If the catcher was on base, there’s only a million other people that can warm up the pitcher.
Not really related, but I’ll quote you JJ since your post reminded of another MLB rule I’d like to see. If you’re going to keep the DH rule in one league and not the other; then when playing cross league games you must play by the visiting team’s rules. i.e. When the Texas Rangers (American League) plays at Atlanta Braves (National League) they there is no DH for that game. That way the home town team gets to see a little bit of variety in baseball.
This. I was starting to wonder if this thread is completely dominated by NL fans. The NL is, AFAIK, the only baseball league in the world that still doesn’t use the DH. I really don’t care to watch pitchers [try to] hit. Though I’ll admit it was fun when Felix Hernandez hit that grand slam against the Mets a few years ago.
Notice my use of “should.” That’s what makes American football a joke as a team sport. And it also contributes to the reason why football kills its players.
I totally disagree about the beamers (For those who don’t follow cricket, a beamer is a ball that doesn’t bounce and is at waist height or higher when it reaches the batter).
That would lead to intimidatory bowling where every ball is bowled at the batters body. All you’d ever see would be slogged horizontal bat shots and shots played out of sheer self-preservation. In essence it’d just become a form of baseball where the pitcher was allowed to hit the batter in the body. Straight-bat shots and any shot played to the off-side would soon become a thing of the past.
Terrible, terrible idea.
Bodyline wouldn’t really work these days due to the fast bowlers being limited to two bouncers per over (a rule that was in itself brought about because of mindless intimidatory bowling during the 70s and 80s).
If Bodyline hadn’t been outlawed after the 1932/33 season the great West Indian bowlers of the 60s onwards would have literally killed more than a few batsmen in the pre-helmet era.
Good riddance to it. It was a cowardly strategy that led to boring cricket. And in its final incarnation “Leg theory” only barely succeeded in stopping Bradman.
My least favourite thing about cricket is that winning the coin toss can play such a huge role in determining the outcome of a match. I wouldn’t change it, though. It’s a part of the game, and some determined batting by the team that suffers the worst of the batting conditions can neuter the advantage.
There are too many teams now for that to be feasible/fair.
I don’t think mlti-tier playoffs is a bad thing at baseball, but if there is to be a “Wild Card” team there should also be a balanced schedule.
There are now going to be 15 teams per league, 5 teams in 3 divisions each - that’s great. But either forget interleague play, or go whole hog and every team plays the same teams from the other league in the same number of games.
14x11 = 154 games would be my preference, with no interleague games. This leaves plenty of time to have three rounds of playoff games, if that’s their bag: 3 division winners plus 2 “Wild Cards” who play a single sudden death play-in game before having a 5-game LDS and 7-game LCS leading up to the World Series. Opening Day is in April, the World Series is in October, and there’s no unfairness about win/loss records in the Wild Card standings due to divisional or interleague “strength of schedule” matchups.
Alternatively, if interleague is here to stay, the entire NL should play the same division of the AL one year and vice versa, the same number of times. So in 2013, all NL teams will play (say) the AL East and al AL teams the NL West, then rotate around. Each team now plays 10 games against their 14 other intra-league opponents, and 3 games each against the 5 inter-league division teams, for 140 + 15 = 155 games per regular season. Again, plenty of time for the “extra” rounds of playoff games.
If people want to see “natural rival” interleague games, let them schedule a 1 game (or even 3 game) series that are exhibition games like the former tradition of “The Mayor’s Trophy” in NYC between the Yankees and Giants or Dodgers and then the Yankees and Mets. Plenty of teams have no such “natural regional rival” and forcing one is even stupider than unbalancing the regular season schedule to exaggerate those that do exist.