It seems as though everyone thinks baseball is on the decline, and that’s pretty tough to the latter with very few intriguing story lines for the casual fan this season. A couple weeks ago we saw the TV ratings come out that were very low, but the A’s were surprisingly up +48% as MCeezy quickly pointed out to me. We’ve seen attendance head south with half the teams drawing under 30,000 per game. The proclaimed best player in baseball just hit his 600^th homer, but being a cheater and liar, so nobody seemed to care. The umpires are blowing calls left and right, and replay is still out of the question for some inconceivable reason. The worst part is even the umpires have said they wouldn’t mind it. In the YouTwitFace Era, we need instant gratification. We want everything now, and sitting through long baseball games everyday isn’t always that appealing. There are so many other options out there, it’s hard to keep anyone’s attention for very long anymore. How does baseball win back its viewers? Speed up games, and move into the YouTwitFace Era. Maybe even think about realignment to get people fired up about beating teams within their state/region. Maybe throwing out the whole AL and NL thing wouldn’t even be a terrible idea. I’d love to see a division filled with the California teams (A’s, Angels, Dodgers, Giants, Padres), I can already hear the smack talk between me and my friends. There’s no question that the DH causes games to be longer adding another hitter to the lineup. The AL games take close to a fifteen minutes longer to complete than NL games, so axe the DH. Maybe limiting the time a batter can step out of the box or putting a pitching clock up when runners aren’t on base (they already do that in college). There are tons of solutions, but baseball is so old school that they just don’t conform to the times. I will always love the game regardless of whether it conforms to the times or not, but if they don’t do something, they are going to be battling the NHL for the third most popular sport. One thing I’ve always liked about the NBA and NFL is that they do make an effort to make the game better for us, the fans. Hell, the NFL is looking into putting a mirco chip into the football to see if the ball crosses the goal line or first down marker, and why not use technology to their advantage! Have you ever heard someone regret starting to use the latest technology? Yeah, that’s what I thought… Continue reading