What should MLB do to restore interest in the game?

[Mike Furley]

I got tired of seeing the death of Fidrych being on the main page, and seeing as nobody has entered a comment to this section since April 30th, I'm guessing interest in MLB is not that big.

I used to be a big fan of baseball growing up. I'm originally from the East Coast. My dad was a big Yankees fan so that was my team as a youngster. Moving to Ohio I was able to enjoy following the Reds success while in high school, and the Indians were a pleasant surprise for awhile too.

The strike in 1994 kind of soured me, and the steroids scandal more or less killed baseball for me. I wouldn't mind following MLB in the future, but a lot of changes need to take place before that would ever happen. The following would be my ideas to fix the game:

1.) Year round drug testing for anybody under a professional contract every month with the results published on the internet. From Class A ball all the way up to the Major Leagues. First offense is a year long ban. 2nd offense is a lifetime ban.

2.) Institute a Salary Cap with both minimal and maximum levels. I'm tired of seeing the Red Sox and Yankees buy championships. I'm also tired of seeing the bottom feeders field minor leaguers and occasionally striking gold once every decade or too.

3.) Institute Revenue sharing along the lines of the NFL. Yes they have the luxury tax now, but the rich teams are now just subsidizing the poor teams to stay mediocre.

4.) Eliminate the Designated Hitter in the American League. It's boring.

5.) Move the fences back so there's less a reliance on station to station baseball where you hope for the big home run. I prefer to see a return to the hit & run, bunting, and stealing bases. The Cardinal teams of Whitey Herzog or the A's under Billy Martin were fun to watch.

6.) Eliminate situational relief pitching. It slows the game down. I'd say that if you change pitchers, he must finish the inning. The only exception would be is if the pitcher gives up a run. This would mean most pitching changes would be at the begining of an inning while the viewers are on a commercial break.

7.) Change free agency so its more like hockey. Too many players are switching teams so there's less to identify with for the fans or local community. I'd say nobody is eligible for free agency until they reach the age of 28 or have seven years in with a MLB club, which ever is less.

8.) Contraction/Relocation - Once all of these changes are implemented, if a franchise loses money, consistently sucks, or has poor attendance, then that team should either be relocated or contracted out of existence. Furthermore, no other teams can object to the relocation city as infringing upon their market. A city like Columbus, if it can support a franchise, should not be blackballed by the Reds, Indians, and Pirates as being part of "their" market.

9.) Blackouts of telecasts cannot extend beyond a thirty minute drive from the stadium. It is ridiculous that Columbus, two or more hours removed from Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, can be blacked out for poor attendance for one of those teams.

10.) Cease playing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch. It was appropriate in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but the Star Spangled Banner to open the game is a suitable enough recognition of our freedoms and honor to our troops. "Take me out the Ballgame" should be restored to the 7th inning stretch in all stadiums.

[osusteve]

The major league baseball player's union (the most powerful union in the United States) is a cancer on the game.

Schedule playoff and world series games in the afternoon. Baseball has largely become an old man's game. Young kids (who can become big baseball fans) cannot stay up until Midnight to watch or attend the games. How many NFL playoff games are played at nights on weekdays??

[byebyelloyd]

I got tired of seeing the death of Fidrych being on the main page, and seeing as nobody has entered a comment to this section since April 30th, I'm guessing interest in MLB is not that big.

I used to be a big fan of baseball growing up. I'm originally from the East Coast. My dad was a big Yankees fan so that was my team as a youngster. Moving to Ohio I was able to enjoy following the Reds success while in high school, and the Indians were a pleasant surprise for awhile too.

The strike in 1994 kind of soured me, and the steroids scandal more or less killed baseball for me. I wouldn't mind following MLB in the future, but a lot of changes need to take place before that would ever happen. The following would be my ideas to fix the game:

1.) Year round drug testing for anybody under a professional contract every month with the results published on the internet. From Class A ball all the way up to the Major Leagues. First offense is a year long ban. 2nd offense is a lifetime ban.

2.) Institute a Salary Cap with both minimal and maximum levels. I'm tired of seeing the Red Sox and Yankees buy championships. I'm also tired of seeing the bottom feeders field minor leaguers and occasionally striking gold once every decade or too.

3.) Institute Revenue sharing along the lines of the NFL. Yes they have the luxury tax now, but the rich teams are now just subsidizing the poor teams to stay mediocre.

4.) Eliminate the Designated Hitter in the American League. It's boring.

5.) Move the fences back so there's less a reliance on station to station baseball where you hope for the big home run. I prefer to see a return to the hit & run, bunting, and stealing bases. The Cardinal teams of Whitey Herzog or the A's under Billy Martin were fun to watch.

6.) Eliminate situational relief pitching. It slows the game down. I'd say that if you change pitchers, he must finish the inning. The only exception would be is if the pitcher gives up a run. This would mean most pitching changes would be at the begining of an inning while the viewers are on a commercial break.

7.) Change free agency so its more like hockey. Too many players are switching teams so there's less to identify with for the fans or local community. I'd say nobody is eligible for free agency until they reach the age of 28 or have seven years in with a MLB club, which ever is less.

8.) Contraction/Relocation - Once all of these changes are implemented, if a franchise loses money, consistently sucks, or has poor attendance, then that team should either be relocated or contracted out of existence. Furthermore, no other teams can object to the relocation city as infringing upon their market. A city like Columbus, if it can support a franchise, should not be blackballed by the Reds, Indians, and Pirates as being part of "their" market.

9.) Blackouts of telecasts cannot extend beyond a thirty minute drive from the stadium. It is ridiculous that Columbus, two or more hours removed from Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, can be blacked out for poor attendance for one of those teams.

10.) Cease playing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch. It was appropriate in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but the Star Spangled Banner to open the game is a suitable enough recognition of our freedoms and honor to our troops. "Take me out the Ballgame" should be restored to the 7th inning stretch in all stadiums.

letting barry bonds records stand is the biggest atrocity to date, but then i stopped watching when ken griffey jr. took a much much smaller contract, albeit still too much, to come back home to cincy to play ball the right way and fans shit all over him here and nationwide for his decision. that was it for me.

[zilla]

More interesting players. I remember growing up we had some interesting guys in baseball. Now it seems like a bunch of robots with no spark. Other than Manny of course, but we all know his situation.

[gator]

Furley,

Pretty good post considering that I, like many Americans, have all but given up on professional baseball. I don't really disagree with anything you said, but I would like to highlight the main points I agree with.

Point 6 - Situational relief pitching - Really does slow the game down and makes the game too long. I get that baseball is a slow-paced, high-anxiety, tension-based sport from the fans' perspective, but their is a pace below which I find the game unwatchable. Coming back from one commercial break to see one batter and then another commercial break for a pitching change sucks.

Point 1- Steroids - Maybe the single biggest point you made. baseball can't get back my respect or viewership until I feel like the game is on the up and up. This includes, like you mentioned, frequent testing with stiff penalties for juicing as well as excluding certain individual from the Hall of Fame and striping away some records. Let's be honest, some of players didn't get caught by a drug test but we can reason logically to know who was using beyond a reasonable doubt, IMO. Look at the history stats of Bonds and McGwire. I guess McGwire did finally admit to using Androstenedione during his record breaking season, but what really pisses me off is that these players think the fans are so stupid that we couldn't already read between the lines. Looking at McGwire's lifetime stats in MLB, we see he only broke 40 homeruns 3 times in the 13 seasons leading up to his record breaking season (49,42, and 52), with the 52 coming in his 11th season. Following his 11th season, he dropped to 34 and 24 HRs in the next two seasons before hitting 70 and 65 in consecutive seasons in the twilight of his career. Oh yeah, that doesn't looks suspicious at all. Not to mention he droped back to 32 and 29HRs in the next two seasons. Bonds - Never broke 50 HRs before hitting 73 in his 16th season. In fact, every season of Bonds 16th - 19th years (4 years) placed in his top 6 seasons of HR production. The guy might as well have had a cane and walker out there as far as baseball careers are concerned and he was strokin' the ball like he had never done before in his career. Sosa - Had one season with exactly 40 HRs (career high to that point) in his first 10 years, then he hits 66, 63, 50, and 64 in consecutive seasons. OK, this guy is a little closer to his prime, but the guy hit 63+ HRs in 3 out of 4 seasons.:eek: Is it just me or did that seem suspicious? Not to mention he was corking the bat. In fact, let's not just throw the players under the bus, how about Bud Selig? You have a single season HR record standing since '61 and not everyone accepted that record because he needed more games to break Babe's record of 60 set in '27. So essentially, you have a record that had stood in some form for 70 years (and in my opinion still stands today). Then from '98-'01, 3 players had a combined 6 seasons that shattered this record.......coincidence? You don't think MLB management turned a blind eye to the steroid problem because they desperately wanted to get back viewers they were still missing since the '94 strike? Bud "Punk-Ass" Selig and his crew sold out the game and every fan that enjoyed the game just to get ratings. So I would add one more thought to your steps to get back the game: get rid of Bud because I refuse to watch as long as he is there. His view of my intelligence insults me. If you had even the slightest slightest thinking ability, you knew what was going on before Jose Canseco "enlightened" us.

Points 7 and 9 - Free agency and blackouts - I think pro sports, in general, are hard to get behind because their doesn't seem to be any loyalty by the team or the players. The two points you mentioned are the big reasons, IMO. If they don't want to be loyal to me as a fan, I'm sure as hell not going to throw down my hard-earned money for them. Since I don't really have a MLB team anymore, I'll kind of relate my point with the Jacksonville Jaguars. On one hand, they seem to be doing some good things by consistently picking up some former Gators. To me, that is smart because it builds interest and loyalty and the organization extends their fanbase to Gainesville which is 90-120 minutes from Jacksonville. On the other hand, they use the blackout (and it may be enforced by the league and not the organization for all I know) to their detriment. The package ticket deals for Jacksonville are too expensive, IMO. In fact, they initially wanted people to buy 3 seasons worth of tickets just to be able to get them. That's a heck of a commitment. They finally changed that, but there is still a blackout as long as the game is not sold out. So let's say you buy one of these season deals, but you can't actually make it to the game one weekend for some reason. We'll if you're anywhere in the area, you're just SOL on catching the game. I have dish network and get my local channels from Jacksonville although I am nearly 2 hours from there. I don't know if cable would get the game where I am at, but when a game is blacked out to the people that are most interested in that team; I just don't give a shit about watching it. I don't see how the blackout translates into anything good in the business market, other than it might force a TV network to buy up the remaining tickets so they can air it. I don't think the fans appreciate it.

[gator]

Just a few mere hours after I put up the above post, and there is a SportsCenter hit about Sosa testing positive in what was supposed to be an anonymous test. Funny! I haven't even seen the segment yet, but I don't think they are going to tell me anything I didn't already know.

[rickyleach]

go on strike again until baseball makes all the cheaters names public, lets get all of this out in the open so we can start thinking of who is really a great player and who should be blackballed from baseball. cheaters never prosper and those that did it are finding out the hard way... also the hall of fame can build a seperate room and call it the hall of SHAME so all baseball fans forever will know who cheated..

[Voleye]

We had diamond club seats in Cincy on Sunday. They were given to me by a vendor. Free parking, brunch, drinks, food, and third row seats behind the plate. Harang V Buehrle (decent matchup). Everything free. I was bored out of my mind. I could not get into the game and enjoy it at all. I used to have several fantasy teams, I could tell you who was the middle relief pitchers for any team out there. I could care less anymore. I cant name the pitchers on the Reds. I dont know if its roids, the game is slow, players move around to much and can't "connect" or root for one guy. But I could care less about baseball. How long till college football and hockey start up!