The State of Major League Baseball 2008

There’s a site I frequent quite often, it’s called “The Biz of Baseball” run by a fellow by the name of Maury Brown. If you are interested in the business dealings of the sport, it’s an invaluable site (even if you’re not interested, it’s just good reading). Anyway, in December of 2006, they ran an article called “32 Voices on the State of the Game“. It was an article with a sort of free flowing stream of consciousness from several completely different viewpoints. It was quite compelling. Well, they’ve done it again.
Out today is the next installment, entitled “The State of Major League Baseball 2008“. The odd thing (to me) about this entry is that I was asked to contribute to this new article. That was mind boggling to me, as I consider myself a small fry when it comes to things like this. But Maury persisted, said I was someone he definitely wanted a “a new voice that was a fan perspective”. So I sat down and wrote. If you’re familiar with this site, you know I can tend to “go off” on tangents, and just get mad at stuff. That’s kind of what I did in my piece. So check out the new article, not because I am in it, but because there’s a lot of good thoughts in there.
I still feel a bit “tingly” to be in the same piece with some heavyweights and big names like Chuck Armstrong (President, Seattle Mariners), Jerry Crasnick (ESPN Author), Jeff Erickson (Rotowire), Brent Gambill (Producer, XM Satellite Radio’s MLB Channel), Jeff Passan (Yahoo), and of course Ken Rosenthal (from everywhere). Thanks Maury!

Edit: After getting permission from Maury, here’s my piece from the full article.
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)
I’ll start off with a theft from Will Carroll. It comes from the first Voices entry of this series.
“Saying what’s right and wrong with the game is an exercise in hubris and futility.”
Will’s right. It’s hard to have a good, honest list as to what is right and what is wrong that covers everything, which everyone can agree with. Even if you could make the list, would you want to? The flaws are what make the game. Baseball is a confusing game to “figure out”. You think you have a handle on how it should be done, and then find out that you don’t. But as humans, we tend to complain about things first. Most of the complaints you hear about about baseball are “too expensive” or “steroids”.
The bigger complaint is about money, though. There’s lawsuits about statistics (who owns the numbers), so much advertising that the head spins, a cost of parking and gas that is more than tickets in some places, and the price of concessions? Ha! Heck, the mlb minimum salary ($390,000) is so far out of whack with the “real” minimum wage ($12,168, assuming 40 hr work week) that it’s mind boggling how far removed from reality MLB seems to be when you talk about money. Everything is about the “Baby Ruth Home Run Challenge”, or the “DHL Pregame show”, or the “Monster.com All Star ballot”, to things like whatever the name of the Giants park is this week, and all that. You could take up the space that all 30 of us are using to talk about corporate naming issues. Heck, I saw a McDonald’s logo ON THE PITCHER’S MOUND in PNC Park when looking at it in Google Maps. My kid’s bobbleheads have half a dozen logos on them, nothing can get out there without being sponsored. I’m surprised there aren’t some sort of logo inside the men’s urinals in the bathrooms – or on the hot dogs themselves! We have so much money floating around the game that if baseball gave a religious tithe like Jesus commanded, we could probably do away with a lot of poverty in places. Don’t even get me started on the extortion of cities that is building new stadiums.
On top of the things with money, then there are the things that are just confusing. For example, MLB made a major stink recently about how games are “too long”, and they want to shave some time off. I think I read where the average time is longer by a matter of single digit seconds. Not minutes, but seconds. So what comes out at the same time? The note that we will have instant replay for home run balls, and for balls by the foul pole. They make a major deal about games being too long, then add a time suck like instant replay. Want the games to move faster? Call the bloody strike zone the way it is defined in the rule book. There’s several rules that are already on the books that if actually ENFORCED would make the games go faster. Man, that’s just perplexing.
A lot is made of the fact that it’s a game meant for kids, but so many ancillary things around the game are things we have to “explain” to kids is a major hassle. As the parent of a three year old, I’m enjoying teaching my kid that a home run is not just when they “run” around the bases – they have to hit the ball over the fence. If I had to get into why Barry Bonds looks like a horse, or why she keeps hearing the words “performance enhancing”, I don’t know if I’d try to get my kid into baseball. There’s so much business around the game, that it almost doesn’t feel like it’s for “kids” anymore. We’re teaching kids to get ahead, get the biggest signing bonus there is, you’ll “strike it rich with Scott Boras”, etc, etc, etc.. That’s why I’m enjoying Josh Hamilton now. A man who has discovered God, and is not afraid to show it. Good for him. Oh, he’s not the only one, but he is a local one to me, so I hear about him the most. When you hear so much bad about the sport all the time in the media, it’s nice to hear something nice like that.
What is The state of baseball? The state of “baseball” is fine, despite all the negativity above. The sport is too good to kill, but if you’re reading the website this article will appear on, you probably know this already. The most vitriolic complainer will still love sitting out at the park watching the game. Baseball will sometimes go and do something very nice – like the recent Negro League player draft at the recent MLB draft. I enjoyed that moment a lot. So yeah, there’s good there, but there’s SO MUCH negative it feels that it’s hard to find the good (outside the actual game itself).
P.S. I would like the return of scheduled doubleheaders – heck, give me a tripleheader!