Tag: baseball

Baseball is something that I really enjoy. Beyond just watching a game, there is a rich history to the sport¹. That history ties together generations going back to the Civil War. People playing baseball in the 19th century would recognize the game today and vice versa–or, at least, that used to be the case.

Baseball has always been a business. To deny that is to deny obvious history. For a time, the business and the game seemed to find precarious balance. That no longer seems to be the case. Business has taken over. When I read baseball history, of times when the players were underpaid and taken advantage of, I rooted for the players and hooted at the owners. Free agency was a big break for players, finally releasing them from the barbed hook of the reserve clause. The problem is that the players became part of the business. When players almost routinely get 8- and 9-figure contacts, how can it be otherwise? When teams invest that much in players, how can they not look to do anything they can to increase viewership of the game, even if that means changing the very nature of the game itself?

The biggest complaint I read about baseball is that it is too slow. At the end of the Second World War, the average length of a baseball game was 2 hours and 7 minutes². In the year I was born, the average length jumped to 2 hours 23 minutes. The average length of a game passed the 3 hour mark for the first time in 2014. In 2021, it was 3 hours and 11 minutes the longest so far.

I find the last stat interesting. For years baseball has been tweaking the game to find ways to speed it up. For example, they made it so that pitchers could call an intentional walk without requiring a pitcher to throw any pitches. That would speed up the game. I considered that intentional nonsense. Meanwhile, “instant” replay was introduced to the game, but there was nothing “instant” about it.

Now there is talk of adding a pitch clock to the game. Clocks are anathema to baseball. One of the things that makes the sport unique is that there is no clock, never has been. Introducing one takes things too far for my taste.

Another complaint is that there is not enough action in the game. People want to see hits, they want action. I agree with that, but I also appreciate the strategy of the game in much the way I imagine a seasoned chess player sees the strategy of a chess game unfolding on the board before them.

What to do then? How do you speed up the game while generating more “action”?

I have what I think is a fairly simple solution: trade speed for endurance.

Fans of my age (and older) will often lament that too few pitchers pitch complete games anymore. Indeed, if we take another look at the years we looked at above, then we’ll find that at the end of the Second World War, there were an average of 2.13 pitchers per game. In the year I was born that jumped to 2.45 pitchers per game. In 2021, the most recent full season, there were 4.43 pitchers per game. The reason pitchers no longer pitch complete games is because they throw so much harder than they used to. The 100 MPH fastball is commonplace today. Pitchers who throw that hard have to protect their arms. Teams have to protect their investment in those pitchers³, and therefore, starters now routinely aim to go 5-6 innings instead of nine.

At the same time, hitters don’t hit as much because they are facing 100 MPH pitches. They strike out a lot more. When they do connect, however, they send the ball sailing over the fences because to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and a 100 MPH fastball will fly if you can manage to make contact with it. So we don’t see a lot of excitment on the field anymore. We strikeouts and home runs.

When I say that baseball should trade speed for endurance, I am talking about a solution to address both of these problems. Baseball should look to trade speed (100 MPH fastballs) for endurance (more complete games). Two main results of this address the problems at hand:

1. If starters were required to go a minimum of 8 innings (unless injured), the game would speed up. There would no longer be 4-5 pitching changes per game. Each pitching change takes from 2-3 minutes. Cutting these down from 5 to 1 per game shaves off 8 to 12 minutes per game. Immediately our “average” length drops from 3 hours and 11 minutes down to 2 hours 59 minutes.
2. Forcing a starter to pitch 8 innings means severely limiting 100 MPH fastballs. This means more hitting and more hitting means more action during the game to make the game exciting.

There is no need to add a pitch clock. No need to introdce rules that prevent strategy like infield shifts. Pitchers have to rely on more than just a fastball to get batters out. They need their teams to back them up. Hitters get back into the game.

Of course, such a move more or less elimates the need for middle relief, and while that’s unfortunate, some sacrifices have to be made to maintain the integrity of the game. Closers are still allowed in this scenario, although I’d encourage starters to go for complete games.

As to whether or not such changes would really work, one can point to history. Until around 1962, it was more common for there to be 2 pitcher in a game than 3. There were of hits, lots of action, and faster games. Maybe not as many home runs, but we are looking for action and excitement right? Plus, wouldn’t it be cool to see pitchers go the distance again?

This is my suggestion for how to improve baseball: trade speed (of pitches) for endurance (of pitchers) and see what happens. I think more people would watch games just to see how these changes would play out.

Written on April 21, 2022.

It was bottom of the ninth with two outs and a very slow runner on third and the score tied nothing-nothing. There were two strikes on the batter. It wasn’t looking good. And then, by some miracle, that batter got a hit, the run scored, and the game was over!

I thought about this scenario when I read that twice-past the eleventh hour, Major League Baseball and the Major League Players Association finally had an agreement. After canceling the first two weeks of the season, MLB magically uncanceled it, saying that there would be a full 162-game season. It would just start a week later, and games would be made up through doubleheaders that would go the full 9-innings. Both MLB and the players seemed jubilant.

Not me.

I was left feeling jerked around by the entire process. MLB jerked me around when the locked out the players and refused to deal with them for a few months. The players jerked me around when the started with a going-in position to try to really make the game better for players–all players, including the youngest, and the oldest of retirees — and then seemed to gave on those demands that didn’t put money directly into their pockets. Then MLB jerked me around again with a ridiculous idea for a 14-team post season, and an eleventh hour international draft.

At this point, I’m pretty tired of being jerked around. In all honesty, as I said in an earlier post, I was hoping the entire season would be lost. I was hoping that, like Max from Where the Wild Things Are, and both sides would get sent to their respective rooms without any supper. Both side need a talking to. The problem is there is really no one to give them that talking to, except the fans.

Right now, I’m disappointed enough to be uninteresting in games, but very interesting fan reaction to all of this jerking around. Part of me is hoping for news stories about teams–even big market teams, that can come close to filling their seats. Part of me is hoping for reports of viewership down dramatically, threatening the revenue streams. Part of me is eager to see the result of Bernie Sanders introducing legislation to finally but an end to baseball’s antitrust exemption.

Yes, I am bitter right now, a rare manifestation in me, but one that shows just how annoyed all of this jerking around has made me. When I cool down a little, when my head clears, maybe I’ll start to wonder what the players and teams will do to lure fans back to the game; how they will begin to restore trust in the game. Or if it is too little, too late.

In the meantime, there are always minor league games, which in recent years have been much more like a traditional baseball experience than the major league games. No one is a superstar. It doesn’t cost a fortune to attend a game, and there’s much more of chance that you can chat with a player. Parking is easier, the whole scene is more relaxed. You can sit on metal bleachers with a scorecard in your lap and a hot dog on your knee and enjoy the ballgame without all the hype.

Baseball’s temper tantrum has finally abated, but mine, it seems, is just getting warmed up.

Written on March 11, 2022.

This season¹ Major League Baseball will institute a universal designated hitter rule. For readers who are not familiar with baseball, until 1973 pitchers had to come to bat at their turn in the lineup. In 1973, in the American League, a designated hitter was instituted. Pitchers would no longer come to bat. Instead, a player could be designed a batter in the lineup without having to play in the field. There are a variety of reasons for doing this, the most talked about one being that it makes the game more exciting because of the likelihood of more hits.

I don’t like the DH rule, even in the American League. Joe Posnanski makes a good case, however, for the general ridiculousness of pitchers attempting to hit. There is a trade off between those extra hits generated by a designated hitter, and the strategy of situation that often requires bunting, double-switches, and other tactics. For me, it feels like a dumbing down of the game in order to appeal to a wider audience.

What I have come to realize, however, is that baseball is a game played in history. We might experience it in the moment, if we catch a broadcast, or better yet, attend a game in person. But it is afterward that the game solidifies in our memory. It is after the game that we talk about it. Box scores and sports columns are the written historical records of the game. Even sitting in a ball park, watching a game, a bang-bang play often triggers a memory of another game we saw with a similar (or even better) play. A baseball game that unfold live before us is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast hidden remainder of that iceberg is what we think and say and write about the game once it is part of baseball history.

I find this comforting. I used to fret at every inexplicable change that was made to the game, often in the weak attempt at speeding up the pace of the game. But I have come to realize that baseball really is a game played in history. If want to watch a game without a designated hitter, I can find and old replay on TV or the Internet. Better yet, an old radio broadcast. Or a book on the game. Sportswriting, and baseball writing specifically, is among the finest of the American arts.

Baseball is also a game that seems more and more likely to be played in history going forward. As I write this the owners have locked out the players in a dispute over money. The owners want more. The players want more. In locking out the players, the owners have also locked out the fans. Baseball’s commissioner has said, “Simply put, we believe that an offseason lockout is the best mechanism to protect the 2022 season.” I think checking greed on both sides is probably a better mechanism. It seems utterly ridiculous to fans (at least this one) that billionaire owners and mulit-millionaire players are complaining about how much money they make.

For long-time fans, this is nothing new. In past labor negotiations, I’ve been completely behind the players. History shows how poorly the players were treated for the vast majority of the game. Now, however, it seems ridiculous. The players have given up most of what they were asking for, jettisoning those things that might have helped to improve the game in favor of going for the most important goal: money.

This time around, I’m diappointed with both the players and the owners. Let’s call this lockout what it: a shakedown. Let’s frame this lockout in a way that reflects reality, one that both the players and owners don’t want us to think of it: This is a fan lock-out. The players will be fine. The owners will be fine. They both seem to be under the misapprehension that fans are powerless in all of this. But, of course, we are not.

Fans can take action, too. After many years as a subscriber to MLB TV, I canceled my subscription before this season started as a protest. If there is a lockout, if spring training is delayed, if the season is likely to be delayed, why pay for it? And what if there is a season? No fan of the game can be happy with this situation. Players and owners expect that we will all come happily back. So do the networks that broadcast the games. I’m not sure I will, at least, not right away. As I said at the beginning, baseball is a game played in history. There are thousands of games I watch without watching the current season. There are thousands of books and articles I can read about the game without watching the current season. The only way real change will happen is if fans decide to lock out the owners and players: canceled subscriptions, season tickets. Tune out the broadcasts and read the papers instead, read the sportswriters, watch old games, find comfort in the joy of the game without the frustration that greed forces upon us.

Written on February 18, 2022.

Last night (as I write this), the BBWAA voted David Ortiz into the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot. As a lifelong Yankees fan, David Ortiz was often a thorn my side, but I can’t deny that he was a fantastic hitter, and given the dynasty that he played in and his offensive numbers, he belongs in the Hall. I know there was some debate because he spent most of his career as a DH, but sometimes, there is just something amazIng about watching a player play the game over the course of career, seeing a quality they have that other players lack. It is one of those “intagibles” of the game. As a Yankees fan, no matter what the score or who was on the mound, I was always nervous when Ortiz came ot the plate.

I’ve been to Cooperstown five times, most recently this past summer, when we spent a too brief few hours in a suprisingly crowded museum. The museum is wonderful, but walking through the Hall itself, surrounded by the plaques of the greatest of the game, is a moving experience for fan like me. It might seem silly, but the feeling I have standing in the Hall of Fame is the same feeling I had wandering the nave of Westminster Abbey, and seeing the names of kings and philosophers and scientists all around me. The Hall captures the best of the game in one place.

Noteably, the BBWAA did not vote in Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens in their last year of eligibility. I have mixed feelings about this. To me, the Hall of Fame captures the history of the game, the good and the bad. As writers have pointed out, there are amazing players in the Hall who were terrible people off the field. It is a testament that no one is perfect, no matter how great a player they are. But I was (and am) bothered by the blot that the steriods and PED era made on the game. It is a reflection of just how deep a role money has come to play in the game.

And yet… to my knowledge, while these drugs improve muscle strength, they don’t improve hand-eye coordination; they don’t magically instill a player with great baserunning sense; they don’t help you know what pitch is coming next Bonds has the record for homeruns, but if you’ve ever tried to hit a baseball, you know that strength is only part of it. As Joe Posnanski has pointed out, without Bonds–the all-time home run king–in the Hall of Fame, something doesn’t seem right.

Bonds (and Clemens) can still be voted in by the Veteran’s commitee. Right now that doesn’t seem very likley. But on the offchance they do get voted in, I think Pete Rose would finally get his place there as well. Even Ortiz said that it was hard to believe that Bonds and Clemons were not in the Hall with him.

For now, I’m happy for Big Papi. This is a happy moment for him, and all of baesball, at time when we’re not even certain if the 2022 season will start on time because once more, the players and owners are arguing about — you guessed it — money.

Written on January 26, 2022

I needed a day to settle down before I could write about the Yankees loss to the Red Sox on Tuesday night. I watched the game, one of the few that I’ve watched this season, and I went into it excited about the possibilities of the Yankees going all the way. They had a great finish to their final game of the season to make it to the wild card game. But within the first few minutes of Tuesday’s game, I had a strong hunch they weren’t going to win. None of the Yankee players, even the stars, had that hungry, driven look in their eyes. It showed in the game. Just two examples:

Down 2-0, Stanton hit a wicked shot off the Green Monster. He trotted down the first base line, watching the ball go, probably thinking it was a home run. It went off the wall, however, and what could easily have been a standup double ended up a single. Later, with Aaron Judge on first, Stanton hit another smash off the wall, that was played perfectly. Judge went from first to home, and was thrown out. It really Judge’s fault. He was waved home, and should have been held at third.

Whatever happened to running out every hit? Whatever happened to playing smart baseball? With one out and down by two, why risk a play at the plate when you could have had one out and two runners in scoring position? I was frustrated by the end of the game, which was usually short for a Yankees/Red Sox post season match-up. It took me a while before I finally settled down and fell asleep.

Baseball has changed a lot over the course of my life. The longest, most fun I ever had watching the game on TV was during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, I’ve lost track of a lot of the players, and it is hard to keep up. About the only thing I’ve really kept up with are the changing measures of the game. Batting average is no longer a good measure of a hitter; it’s been supplanted by the superior OPS+. WAR and Runs Created allow for comparisons across eras of the game. WHIP tells you a lot more about a pitcher than ERA. Still, I had that little thrill in my gut that I always get at the outset of a game. And despite the Yankees loss, and the end to their season, I am looking forward to next season, and will try to pay more attention, and learn the newer players.

As I write this, the Dodgers are set to play the Cardinals for the National League wildcard. I’m not much of a fan of the wildcard concept. Baseball is a game of series. The entire season is made up of 3 or 4 game series; and the postseason is also series: best 3 out of 5, best 4 out of 7. But this relatively new wildcard playoff game is a sudden death, do-or-die thing. Not at all what baseball is about. In any case, if I can’t root for the Yankees anymore this season, then I’ll turn my attention to the Dodgers. It boggles my mind that a team that won 106 games in the regular season is a wildcard team. St. Louis, the other wildcard team had 90 wins by comparison. San Francisco, the team that won the NL West, had 107 wins, only one more than the Dodgers.

If I had my way, I’d get rid of the wildcard entirely. I’d also get rid of the designated hitter rule. And I’d play more day games. And I’d scout for announcers and color commentators who could talk about more than just stats; someone like Vin Scully, who really brought color to the games with his commentary. Of course, the game evolves. At least I can take comfort in the past, and the rich history of the game. At the moment, I’m having a blast reading Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100. It makes me want to be a baseball player, and sportswriter at the same time.

A few days ago, the Yankees played the Chicago White Sox (and ended up losing a close one). What made the game unique was that it was played in the middle of a corn field at the Field of Dreams stadium Dyersville, Iowa. The field was originally constructed for the 1989 Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams, which was based on W. P. Kinsella’s novel, Shoeless Joe.

The movie has since become a classic baseball movie, and is a terrific film. The book is probably the best baseball novel ever written, one that I have gone back and read three times.

I imagine there were a lot of dads watching Kevin Costner emerge from the corn in center field with tears welling in their eyes. I admit I was one of them.

With a shortened baseball season in 2020 (thanks, COVID); with all kinds of ridiculous rule changes in order to speed up a game that by design has no clock; with the controversies stirred up by PEDs and, more recently, sticky substances in pitcher’s mitts, it was so refreshing to see Major League Baseball do something right, and hold a game in Iowa, in the midst of a corn field. It highlights the fun of the game and it’s rich history real and fictional.

Sometime before 1982, W. P. Kinsella wrote the words, “If you build it, he will come,” which appear on the very first page of the 1982 novel. Well, they built it in the late 1980s, and 39 years after the novel debuted, MLB finally came. It was wonderful to see. I only wish the Kinsella had lived long enough to see it for himself.