Can the MLB keep up?
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone." - A. Bartlett Giamatti, "Green Fields of the Mind," From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti
Baseball is back, facing new yet familiar challenges to its future and viability. Baseball isn't going anywhere, but the slow creep of rule changes, bad optics, and general shifts in entertainment options have the vultures (or seagulls) circling at a slightly lower altitude than they have in the past.
The traditional arguments, and tradition itself, certainly hold weight when it comes to baseball's perception problems. Games are too long. Games are too slow. The season takes forever. There are too many players to keep track of. If I wanted to watch a 2-1 sporting event, I'd watch a soccer game and still have the rest of my day to do other things. These complaints aren't new nor are they invalid, but the rule changes are addressing these problems. Right? Most of the results are anecdotal up to this point so the actual impact of the changes may not be seen, or felt, for a few years. And for a sport that's so ingrained in our culture that it's survived 2 World Wars and three centuries, what's a few years but a blip? I'd argue a lot these days.
Major League Baseball has an image problem. It's not simply the length of games or the proclivity for low scoring pitchers duel: it's the lack of narrative. The long season takes a lot of luster out of the preseason stories, but the inability to capitalize on the day-to-day episodes allows for only minimal sustained interest. Even the idea behind the pace-of-play rule changes, that faster games would allow other storylines to blossom and the focus to return to the game itself, has shifted the narrative to the rule changes themselves. Discussion of rule changes makes for great content!
Baseball has only to look the NBA to grasp the value of narrative and fans investing in those stories. Only yesterday, baseball had two (2!!) [one in a game featuring the most historic rivalry in sports] bench clearing brawls, but the majority of media (social and traditional) attention was focused on the NBA pettiness of a Twitter and t-shirt fueled beef over the definition of "rookie." Never one to be greedy, the NBA also recently gifted the world a 10-year G Leaguer his first professional appearance, a Kardashian-related scandal, and the first win-or-go-home regular season game in two decades. All in two days! The NBA's unprecedented rise and apparent success may not provide an exact blueprint for baseball's future, but the lessons are certainly informative and prescient.
Fans need something to connect with. They need to able to talk to people outside the fanbase and not experience a series of eye rolls. Controlling the media narrative and supplying buzzworthy news is easier said than done, but the results are astounding and even presidential. Baseball doesn't have an easy fix, but investing in drama and letting big personalities speak their minds can pay off in a big way. Let Shohei Ohtani's translator tell us the two-way stud's theories on the moon landing and Godzilla. Who knows what brilliance we would be blessed with?
With all of that said, baseball teaches you to expect and relish the unexpected. Baseball is the poster child for the saying "just when you thought you'd seen it all..." Anyone remember the World Series last year? Here's to baseball surprising us just one more time.