Seven Surefire Ways to Save Baseball From Dying

Hey look, what do you know? It’s the All-Star Break, meaning the 162-game, six-month baseball season takes a break for four days. Call it a very welcome respite for those, such as myself, who live and die with each pitch for nine innings … only to do the same thing the next day. (Albert Einstein said this was the definition of insanity, or something.)

As usual, the All-Star Break also leads to casual observers or admitted non-fans to bemoan the sport, complain that it isn’t what it once was or gleefully lament its cloudy future via the sure-fire, be-all, end-all indicator that is World Series ratings. Yay!

In a mild upset, almost everyone on the Internet (i.e. scrolling for 17 seconds through Twitter before my ADD caused me to tap something else shiny on my phone) seemed to love the changes baseball made to the Home Run Derby — timed rounds! brackets! Fun! … why not extend that to the rest of the sport, 170+ years of history be damned?

So without taking any more of your time before you click on something else vitally important, here are seven easy ways to turn baseball from a dying sport to a thriving sport …

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Make home runs worth six points: Everyone LOVES offense, or so I’ve been led to believe. A game that finishes 28-14 is apparently a thousand times more exciting than one that ends 4-2. Make dingers worth more because, as Mark McGwire knows, everyone loves the long ball.

Make games three innings long: Rough math, three innings of baseball equals about an hour of real time — a reasonable amount of time to hold your attention. On second thought, maybe we ought to try to make games two innings max. I forgot what I was saying. I have a short attention span, you see. You probably haven’t even been able to read this paragraph, right?

At bats can no longer last more than two minutes: Foul off a ton of pitches? Work the count? Too bad, swing away or else we’ll flip a coin or play rock/paper/scissors to decide if you’re out or walking to first base. Vroom vroom.

Replay for everything: Since we’re going to make games shorter, let’s go to the video booth for everything — even balls and strikes. The dreaded human element can take a long walk off a short pier. With pitch FX data and some robots we should be able to do this at the press of a button.

Make the season 16 games long: A professional baseball game every couple of weeks on a Sunday in the summer? That feels like a novelty I could devote my free time toward.

Use technology so holograms of your favorite player as a kid can still play: You’re telling me you wouldn’t watch hologram Mickey Mantle batting against hologram Pedro Martinez when the Cyber Yankees play the Techno Sox? Nostalgia is a heck of drug.

Bring back PEDs: (Cough, cough, cough.)

So with these seven simple suggestions baseball should be healthy all the way to the 22nd century. Easily. Be sure to print out this page and fax it commissioner Manfred post haste.

[Photo via USA Today Sports Images]