A wonderful solution would be for baseball to start the season April 15 rather than April 1 and end the regular season Sept. 15 instead of Sept. 30. That's correct: a 130-game schedule.While I appreciate that many don't like baseball in cold weather, most of the columns like this seem to really be about not liking baseball at all.
Come to think of it, cutting April and September entirely from the regular season wouldn't be such a bad idea. The season is wayyy toooooo lllllooooooonnnnnnng.
That is, if you take them even remotely seriously. Reading, as it does, like a mashup of yesterday's Whitey Herzog piece, various columns grousing about the weather, and a few warmed over one-liners, it seems just as likely that such columns are about lazy writers, looming deadlines, and easy ideas.
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My instinct is always, always, always that there should be more baseball. I wouldn't mind shortening spring training, though. It's cold in March, too, but not as cold as November, and Spring Training, though wonderful (I'm sure), isn't nearly as necessary as it was back in the 19th/early 20th century. Start the season mid-March, and let's promise to keep the playoffs confined to October.
Yes?
The election season is waaaayyyyy toooooo looooooong. We should just institute a monarchy.
The NFL, NBA, and NHL seasons are as long or longer than baseball. Seriously. Plus everyone's favorite darling, the NFL, has mini camps, and more endless radio and TV time.
When I hear the words "shorten the MLB season," I think, "moron who doesn't like baseball and/or is catering to the LCD of the masses" . . .
I don't know, Gammons suggested two possibilities in his column. Cut the season to 148 games, or have the Series at a fixed location, like the Superbowl.
My first preference would be to cut a round of playoffs, but that won't happen. I don't think the fixed-site series works either, because who can plan to be there for 10 days? But I wouldn't mind reducing the season to 154 or 148.
Applesauce. Start a week earlier, with careful scheduling to ensure as many warm-weather games as possible, put in scheduled day-night double headers once a month, and take out the useless non-travel off-days during the playoffs, and you're cut, what, two weeks off the regular season, maintained 162 games, and are done by mid October every damn year.
What's so hard about that?
This really seems like the complaint du jour. Last season everyone got to rail about Boras and his A-Rod announcement in the middle of the WS. This year, everyone is on about the bad weather and how the baseball season is too long. It will pass. Like Craig said, a lot of these guys have a deadline and are just latching onto the most obvious story.
I'm not sure if your question was rhetorical Craig, but what's so hard about that is money amd the player's union. IIRC, the player's union is against scheduled doubleheaders and MLB is against absolutely anything that would decrease the TV revenues they're raking in right now. I think your idea is a good one, but I don't see it ever getting by the so-called powers that be.
Daniel -- point taken, but shortening the season and/or moving the World Series to a neutral location would have way more serious economic impacts than what I proposed.
My view is that there's nothing really all that wrong that a bit of tweaking (i.e. game start times and playoff days off) wouldn't fix. If you're going to do something, however, it's better to tweak small than tweak big.
I agree with you Craig, and I think your proposal has a lot better chance of being implemented than a 130 or 148 game schedule. I'm just very doubtful that ANY changes will happen, seeing as how MLB is practically printing its own money right now.
That might change next year once we see the ramifications of the economic crisis, but for now, I don't think Mr. Bud has any motivation to move away from the status quo and take an earful from Fehr in the process.
I guess that makes these articles even sillier - I wonder if the point of these is to make some sensational proposition that has no chance of ever happening.
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