Don’t Ruin Baseball For Millennials
• Baseball: The game without a clock. The game that is not over until there are three outs in the final inning.
But if you attend most MiLB (minor league baseball) games, you’ll see a clock between at-bats, between pitches, and between innings. At all MLB (Major League Baseball) games, you’ll now see a clock between innings.
Baseball is changing – changing from the way it’s supposed to be played.
Baseball is changing from its roots. If you want to intentionally walk someone, just hold four fingers up. It’ll save 30 seconds, definitely necessary. Only six mound visits per game so that you don’t have to waste three minutes of your life.
Both of those rules have been implemented in Major League Baseball.
While watching a baseball game on TV, Dan McLaughin, St. Louis Cardinals’ play-by-play announcer, said, sarcastically, “I’m really feeling the 30 seconds being saved by the new intentional walk rule!”
Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner, continues to change the way baseball is played. Instant replay was added under Commissioner Bud Selig, and now, Manfred has added the intentional walk and the mound visits rules.
If people can’t sit down for three hours to watch a baseball game, there’s no need to try to reel them into baseball. Real fans don’t care about 30 seconds of a game, yet, baseball keeps changing for the casual fans instead of the real fans. Why?
Baseball doesn’t need to accommodate people that want to play video games all day. Baseball should accommodate the people that watch baseball from April to October. Not to those who don’t know what tagging up means.
Baseball is the game without a clock. But if baseball continues in the direction it’s going, it’ll lose its fans that care about the game, and it’ll have stadiums with barely anybody in the seats watching a game.
If you care about three minutes and 30 seconds of a game, then don’t watch baseball. Baseball should never branch too far from its roots, and, if they do, they have a rude awakening coming.
