Americas Pastime
Has America’s pastime changed? You can make a strong argument that it has. Baseball has long held the spot as “America’s Pastime.” I’m reading a book right now called “Playing with the Enemy” about baseball just before, during, and immediately following WWII. It’s interesting to see how differently Americans viewed baseball then, 50-60 years ago. Back then, we had traveling baseball teams that toured around and played in front of the troops just behind the front lines to entertain the troops. Baseball to them was patriotic and what set Americans apart from other countries. Nowadays, I’m not sure baseball is even second on our minds. It may not even be third. This is a football culture now. This week, the Yankees clinched a playoff birth, the NL Wild Card is still up for grabs, the AL Central is going to come down to the wire, the NASCAR “playoffs” just started, the US Open in tennis just finished up, the Tour Championship is going on in golf and many more stories. But what do we care about? Mike Vick may start this week, the ongoing Meyer-Kiffin feud, Plaxico Burress goes to jail, and whether or not the Jets lied on their injury reports. I’m not a Yankees fan, I’m a Red Sox fan, but I think says clearly that our sports focus has shifted when ones of the lead stories on ESPN is who will and won’t start on Sunday (several days away) instead of the Yankees clinching a spot in the playoffs. There is still a lot of interest in baseball, but I think our sport attention spans and “we want it now” mentality. It will lead to longer NFL and NCAA seasons. In my opinion, baseball still has a chance. They need to make some changes though to keep from falling too far on the back burner of our minds. Now is the time. Football has taken over and shows no signs of slowing down. Right now, baseball, NASCAR, golf, basketball, everything is just something we follow in football’s offseason. Below are a couple suggestions that I think could baseball keep up with the NFL and NBA before things get out of hand. Over the last 40 years as football and basketball have overtaken baseball as our pastime, they’ve made changes. Steriods and pitching specialization aside, baseball hasn’t. Even being a traditionalist, I realize, some times you have to change. For baseball, it’s time.
1. Embrace technology. Sink millions into it. I read an interesting article in NetworkWorld this week about the Pittsburgh Penguins where they are streaming video, replays, and stats to fans with PDAs that are inside the arena. You need to do this and much more. Be creative and find ways to use technology in and around the stadium and as a way to interact with the fans between the games. I’m not just talking about some additional marketing with a lame Facebook page and some Twitter tweets, I mean really embrace the technology that is out there and flood the fans with it. They will love you for it.
2. Shorten the season. Not by much, but it’s way to long. 162 games. Our attention spans as a society have become way too short to keep up with anything for 162 games. It probably needs to be wrapping up the season or starting the playoffs when NFL kicks off. Can’t we tell who the best team is after 140 games? I know a lot of the single season records and career records would be skewed, but, we can’t compare one generation to the next now anyway, what difference will 20 games make?
3. Speed up the game. This has to be done. Our attention spans are way to short to see a play step out of the box 10 times during an at bat. Can you imagine a football team calling 10 timeouts during a drive? And don’t try to compare a huddle and play clock in football to stepping out of the box. Simple experiment, time the amount of time it takes between plays in football and the amount of time between pitches and change the rules until they match. And the commercial break between every half inning is an invitation to change the channel. Find other ways to advertise on the screen like soccer does and reduce the multitude of commercial breaks and between inning breaks.
4. Add a salary cap and a salary floor. It’s just not as fun if not everyone can compete. Currently, before the season even starts, you can name 5-8 teams that won’t even be in contention by the end of April. That doesn’t make the game intriguing to anyone, the fans, media or players. You could build a lot of excitement for the game (and ticket sales) if 25 teams are in contention in August instead of 10.
5. DH or no DH. Just make a decision already. Either both leagues have a DH or both don’t. Personally, people like to see higher scoring so I think you put a DH in both leagues. But it doesn’t matter, just make it the same.