Posted on 07/13/2011 3:14:20 PM PDT by EveningStar
How can we improve Major League Baseball?
I'm sure we all have our own ideas. Here are some of mine:
Come up with a realistic method of capping a team's payroll.Well, those are some of my suggestions. How about yours?
Eliminate inter-league play. If you want to watch the other league, use your TV.
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.
The All-Star Game:
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."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? Unlike the NBA, NFL, and NHL - these are two separate leagues.
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.
Get the National League to give the Designated Hitter rule a three year tryout. Most amateur leagues and most minor leagues use it.
Eliminate the Bus Selig White Liberal Guilt rules. Selig is another white lib who thinks it's still 1963.
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.
Eliminate Jackie Robinson Day. Please, Bud. Why not just rename Major League Baseball "Jackie Robinsonball"?
The Civil Rights Game? Are you kidding? The Jim Crow era is over. We don't need no stinkin' Civil Rights Game.
Hire me to a coaching gig.
So pretty much the solution is to undo all of the changes made during the past 15 years. I totally agree.
Make the maximum size of gloves/mitts much smaller.
I think it would be best if baseball purists accept the fact that baseball is the most impure, tainted of the major ball sports.
EVERY baseball records should have an asterisk* because of different stadium sizes and layouts, different eras in which players of ALL positions cheated in one way or another, and because the sport wasn’t integrated until 1947.
Get rid of the All-Star game; it’s meaningless and nobody takes any of it seriously.
Allow all-star voting, just for ego-inflating purposes, but, it’s also meaningless and not indicative of a player’s full career.
If a home run hitting contest is a “must”, then make it more meaningful by allowing real pitching against those hitters. My suggestion would be a for minor league pitchers to to the pitching and who don’t know of the hitters’ preferences for pitches.
With regular games, allow for video reviews of 3 questionable calls for each team.
All American League infielders MUST read and speak English.
Add about a dozen more teams around the globe. Make it a REAL World Series.
My husband has frequently opined that what they need is a basic salary, and then bonus payments dependent on your actual performance. Unfortunately, MLB is a union-shop and nobody is going to go for performance pay.
Ditto!
That’s an 87 Topps card.
Baseball needs a female coach - I’ll do it!
Scratching their “cluster” is actually interesting compared to the ones that stand there between every single pitch and open and close the velcro on their batting gloves numerous times. (And I am a baseball fan.)
Put a stop to all “It Gets Better” insanity at once. If MLB insists on getting into the promoting homosexuality business, I’m out. And I love baseball.
everybody would be scartchin their cluster if they had to wear a protective cup big enuf to park a 3 series BMW behind.
Agreed. This kinda sliding your foot in the general vicinity of the plate is ridiculous.
Reduce the regular season to 120 games!
Give Arte Moreno some geography lessons. The Angels are in ANAHEIM, NOT Los Angeles!
Any Steve Bartman kind of fan interference results in a foul ball.
Can we no longer have stadiums named after corporations, please?!
Attractive beer girls with beer backpack dispensers like they have in Japan.
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.
I like your payroll suggestion, am kind of ambivalent about interleague play, but I really don't think trimming back to two divisions in each league would work.
I've been a Yankees' fan since I was born, living on 170th Street in The Bronx, a short stroll from Yankee Stadium. But I'm not like some jaded fans who believe it's some sort of divine right for a team to have a payroll that is a multiple of the league average. Football has it just about right--everyone's payroll is the same, so everyone has a real shot.
Right now, the National League has 16 teams, in three divisions of 5,5 and 6 teams. The American League has 14 teams, with 5,5, and 4 teams in each division. That inequality should be addressed, either by expansion or by realignment. For simplicity sake, and because 16 is a nice, divisible number, let's assume that we end up with that number in each league. Having two divisions of 8 teams each with no wild card would lead to a situation wherein, come September, it is unlikely that there would be more than three or four teams in each league who were still involved in the pennant race.
I'm old enough (63) to remember when the American and the National League each had 8 teams, long before expansion and the wild card. Attendance for a "second division" team, as the bottom half of each league was called, was horrendous once they fell out of the running. By having 3 divisions and a wild card, and half as many teams in each division, the odds are greatly increased that a given team still has at least a shot at the playoffs. Again, the NFL has it just about right--with each league carrying 4 divisions of 4 teams each, and two wild card teams having to get through an extra round, while the two teams with the best records get a first-round bye.
You are correct and I have made the correction. Thanks!!
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