5 Other Ways Baseball Can Modernize The Game

Now that baseball has proven that they can adapt to the modern times by adopting Instant Replay, we at the Deuce think it's time for the great American past time to take a few more steps to becoming a modern day sporting bonanza. Here's a few other ways that we think Major League Baseball can take steps towards modernizing the game for the 2000s.

1) Allow Cheerleaders

The NFL has them, the NBA has them, NHL even has rink girls, baseball needs cheerleaders. Who wouldn't rather see a bunch of cheerleaders dancing on the dugout instead of homer run homer? Baseball has to realize, like all the other sports already have, that sex sells and people need that sexually charged visual stimuli when there is a break in the action...which there are a ton of in a typical baseball game. Teams in Latin America and the minor leagues have already thought of this, the pros need to up their game.
2) Turn on a Pitch Clock

Think of what the 24 second clock and the 35 second clock have done for basketball and football. They've sped up the game and made it more enjoyable with constant action and less farting around. With a pitch clock, the pitcher would have something like 15 seconds to get the pitch off from the moment that he catches the ball from his catcher. No more shaking off pitches and running through the count again, no more constant glances to a base with no throw, no more standing around playing with the rosin bag and scratching yourself waiting for something to happen. If the pitch isn't thrown, the batter gets an automatic ball.

3) Screw It, No More Umps, Computerize it all.

Baseball is not a game where a human's discretion really should into play. There are no penalties or fouls. There is just whether the ball is inside or outside lines, whether the player touches a base and whether the ball touches the player or not. Certainly, the current margin of error can be erased with modern technology. With instant replay now in effect, baseball has made a great stride but it is time for them to go all the way. Tennis employs the Hawk Eye technology which can be used for line calls, cricket is testing it out right now as well, so why can baseball not use them for foul lines?

Baseball has already tested out the Questec system for balls and strikes, why not use it full time? This would take out individual strike zones for umpires favoring pitchers or batters on any given night. It'll be a level playing field for all.

For whether or not a player is out, bio-kinetic sensors and microchips in the balls, gloves and bases could easily tell if contact with a player was made before contact with a bag was made no longer making the ghost base tag force out allowable. The game would finally be played the way it was supposed to be played without umpire's personal preferences getting in the way.

4) No More Rainouts

Be a man, get wet you pansies. No real sport played outdoors cancels a game because it is raining or snowing. Nascar will do it because you're in a vehicle flying around a track at 200mph and its a bit dangerous to bank when you're hydroplaning. Tennis and Cricket will do it because...well because they are a bunch of pansies. Baseball should strive to be tougher than tennis and cricket players. Dangerous lighting is a perfectly good reason to stop a game, but rain? Come on, you play outside, deal with the weather.

5) Relegation

This would redefine modern baseball as we know it. Take a page from the English Premiership and force the lowest performing teams drop down, out of the Majors, and allow the best lower level league teams move up to the Majors. Crazy? Sure it is, but will it force bottom feeders like the Royals and the Nationals to get their shit together and get it together quick or there will be no more MLB television revenue coming in. Its a reward system for not sucking and makes the super long regular season almost more meaningful than the playoffs and certainly more meaningful than it currently is.

So here's how it would be done. The easy way to do it is to take the 3 worst teams from each league right now, 6 teams overall and drop them down into the newly created lower level that we will for now call AAAA. Baseball functioned quite fine before the expansions to 26 then 30 teams with a 162 game schedule and it will again. Then, add in 2 expansion teams to the new league make it a nice 8 team league (like the AL and the NL were before expansion in the 60s) and have them play the old 154 game schedule. Bingo bango you now have the Major League Baseball - Premier League of 24 teams and the Major League Baseball AAAA League of 8 teams. Every year, the worst team in the AL and NL would drop down to the 4A league and be shamed and the best 2 teams would pop up to the Premier league.

Now that is exciting baseball. The Nationals right now are no more than a AAAA league team anyway, they should be playing against teams that are more their level until they can make it up to professional standards.

Man...one can dream.

Baseball photo by Matt McGee