Commentary: Again, how to fix Major League Baseball

Garth Meyer, Gazette Columnist | Jun 13, 20190

Nightly highlights for Major League Baseball ran on ESPN Wednesday, June 5.

An impossible throw from third to first for an out in Toronto, a catch against the fence in Philadelphia, Boston's Chris Sale striking out a series in Kansas City. Then there it was. The highlight of highlights. A batter, a swing and a miss. He stepped off and behind him, empty seats in the first rows, with a Delta Airlines logo on each.

Welcome to America's pastime in 2019.

This is what it is now, in its fourth year of declining attendance; a Delta logo on an empty seat.

It's time for another list of how to fix Major League Baseball.

Four main areas need to be looked at: player movement, sponsorship, the World Series and identity.

First, anybody want to talk about the speed of the game, again?

It's been talked about. Baseball is a slow game. It can be faster, but it was plenty healthy for decades on end at the pace it is now, more or less. So anything about pace is a minor detail.

Oh no, millennials can't watch a slow game? Yes, they can. Baseball, at its best – meaning once a year for about 12 days during the World Series – can be/was arguably the most dramatic of all sporting events. When every pitch matters, every half-inch of dirt in a runner's leadoff, between two teams we know something about, few sports are as riveting.

THE WORLD SERIES:

The World Series cannot have a presenting sponsor. “The World Series presented by YouTube TV” is a national embarrassment. The Masters golf tournament would never do this, so shouldn't the World Series. For a sport in which top players are on $400 million contracts, enough money is available to fund the broadcast of the championships. If the World Series is well-presented, it can become a draw in itself. See the Masters, which maintains its stature from year to year, even if the contenders are uninteresting.

SPONSORSHIP:

Up to the mid-'90s, it was possible for a kid to spend his/her entire childhood up into college watching Major League Baseball, and never have it cross their mind that it was a business.

Now, it crosses every frame of every highlight. In every shot a billboard or a logo, a business for sure, a desperate business, it appears. What's more fun – that, or something that seems real? For adults just the same. The more sponsored-up an endeavor is, the less engaging. While other (pro) sports have a problem with this too, baseball has it far worse.

IDENTITY:

Nightly baseball highlights now show a mix of players in baggy, long pants to the ankle, tighter long pants to the ankle, shorter pants with '70s stirrups, shorter pants with '80s stirrups, socks with no stirrups and more. It's a grab bag. The commissioner needs to pick one. The game needs a uniform, professional look. This is particulary important for baseball, as its identity is so tied to (highbrow) tradition. So much that there can be a certain pretentiousness surrounding Major League Baseball, which only grows more annoying when the game does not take itself seriously enough to look like a grown-man's sport.

For baseball to be overtly casual is too contradictory. If the no. 1 rule of marketing is to be one thing to all people, Major League Baseball is trying to be too many things to too many people.

PLAYER MOVEMENT:

A fan base, of any age, any demographic, in any era, simply cannot, in significant numbers, engage in a sport without identifiable players. We need familiar faces on familiar teams over time. When (star) players find a reason to stay on a team for awhile, or a career, by repetition, potential fans register who they are. This is even more important to teams which have just played in the World Series. Because, that is the only event that is really seen all year in baseball. Thus, that is where names get established.

Baseball has to finally take this seriously. If the average sports fan cannot name at least one or two players on each World Series team at the end of the season, you have a major problem. It means there is little to identify with, thus little interest and another year of little ratings.

Taking player movement seriously would mean coming up with some kind of incentive system for players to stay on a team. The free market is a good thing, but the problem is, it has no inherent soul. It just needs a little help on this one. Soul is what sells.

CONCLUSION:

If for no other reason, Major League Baseball needs be fixed because this country needs it. Shared culture is important to any society, and to a lose a great piece of that, for fixable reasons, just won’t do.