How can we improve Major League Baseball?
I'm sure we all have our own ideas. Here are some of mine:
A. Come up with a realistic method of capping a team's payroll.
Won't happen until or unless the owners quit a) trying to outsmart each other while b) pleading to stop us before we overspend,
misspend, or malspend again, and ignoring c) the one American team sport that has
more different world champions
withouta salary cap than any of the ones that
do have salary caps. (Hint: it's their sport.) Though I notice this offseason that there was
a kind of market correction that does happen from time to time, though I'm no fool---the same owners working with this "market
correction" are going to be at least some of those ready to launch a big bidding war for Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, soon.
B. Eliminate inter-league play. If you want to watch the other league, use your TV.
Sound as a nut. There are two places for interleague play: the All-Star Game and the World Series.
C. Have only two divisions in each league. The top two teams in each division would play each other. The wild card would thus be eliminated. This of course requires that we have an even number of teams in each league.
If you
must have three division leagues, here's the sound way to determine the postseason:
* Eliminate the wild cards.
* The division winner with the best regular-season record gets a round-one bye, and the other two division winners play a best-
of-three division series, with the winner meeting the third division winner in the League Championship Series.
* Return the LCS to a best-of-five.
* Thus restoring the World Series's primacy.
D. The All-Star Game:
1. The winner of the All-Star Game would no longer determine the home field advantage in the World Series. Thus the All-Star game would no longer "count."
It doesn't, as of this season. They took care of that in the new collective bargaining agreement. Again, sound as a nut.
2. Since the All-Star Game would no longer count, games that are tied after 9 innings would end in a tie. No more extra innings in an All-Star Game.
Nah, let the game go to the extra. But knock it off with the all-teams-must-be-represented jazz, at least to the extent that you're
removing pitchers who might be pitching well enough just to go to the bullpens.
A thought along that line: Teams ought to quit worrying about their pitchers working in the All-Star Game if the Game happens to
fall on their normal between-start throwing days. They're going to throw anyway, and they probably throw the near-equivalent of
a quality start on those throwing days. Less of pitchers begging off the All-Star Game because of starting the last or next-to-last
games before the break. If the Game is on their normal throw day, it won't damage them.
3. Determining the home field advantage in the World Series would revert to the alternating mehod used before 2003. The American League would have the home field advantage during odd-numbered years and the National League would have the home field advantage during even-numbered years. Why not let the team with the best overall record get the home field advantage? Well, unlike the NBA, NFL, and NHL - these are two separate leagues.
Sound as a nut, again.
E. Get the National League to give the Designated Hitter rule a three year tryout. Most amateur leagues and most minor leagues use it.
How about getting the American League to go three years
without the DH, especially considering the National League is seeing
a nice little swell of decent hitting pitchers recently? (What the hey, Madison Bumgarner wasn't kidding when he offered to be a DH
during a postseason set, and he's got the bat to back it up . . . )
F. Eliminate the Bus Selig White Liberal Guilt Rules. Selig is another white lib who thinks it's still 1963.
1. The Dodgers retired Jackie Robinson's number 42 in 1972. Robinson was still alive and attended the ceremonies (he died later that year). Allow the other teams to use the number 42 again. Besides, 42 is Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.
I didn't see anything terribly
wrong with retiring Jackie Robinson's uniform number across the board. Forget white liberal guilt,
Robinson can still stand as a reminder of just how the civil rights movement to follow him did a lot of things wrong while getting
proper results. (Carl Erskine, a Robinson teammate, speaking in 1970:
[Stokely] Carmichael and [H. Rap] Brown [to name two]
can never understand what Jackie did. But he understands them.)
2. Eliminate Jackie Robinson Day. Or why not just rename Major League Baseball "Jackie Robinsonball"?
Personally, I'd be in favour of keeping Robinson day and adding such things as:
* Casey Stengel Day. (Name one more memorable
character who also happened to be a great manager.)
* Hank Aaron Day. (
What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, and
what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South, for breaking
a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron, who was met at home
plate not only by every member of the Braves, but by his father and mother.---Vin Scully, calling Aaron's 715th home run in 1974.
And when Aaron's mother plunged through the mob to yank her son into a hug and kiss, it was priceless.)
* Vin Scully Day. (Was there ever a better baseball voice?)
* Hall of Fame Day. (I don't think any other American team sport inducts its honourees into the Hall of Fame
during their seasons,
though I could be wrong.)
* Marvin Miller Day. (If the Veterans Committee offshoots won't do the decent thing and put into Cooperstown the man who helped
win players their reasonable right to sell their services on an open market and ended the ages when players were chattel, the least
baseball can do is set aside a day in his honour.)
3. The Civil Rights Game? Are you kidding? The Jim Crow era is over. We don't need no stinkin' Civil Rights Game.
No argument here.
Though I think the Hall of Fame should re-name the writers' wing from the Ford C. Frick Award to the Red Smith Award . . .
