Things What Which Got To Stop

The scheduling of the baseball playoffs has really got to stop. I live about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia, which is where tonight's NLCS game is being played. And folks, cats and kittens, its friggin' cold here. It is frigid. Not depths of winter cold, but to play baseball outside? Cold. It affects the quality of play, and during the most important part of the year, it shouldn't.

Now, I know the schedule is made for the convenience of TV, and it is the billions that TV provides that helps pay for the sport. I get it.

But how do you impress TV and get them to continue to shovel bucks at you? Give them a compelling product that people want to watch. How to you do that? Schedule the games when it is appropriate for baseball to be played. If a Northeast team is involved, they can't play games at night in mid October. Period.

Along with this, improve the product on the field. Bill James explains in his books that there are probably a dozen changes you could make to speed up baseball games, and baseball could implement them tomorrow if they wanted to. Faster game, better product, TV wants in. (For example, James points out the following-Batters don't get to call timeout, umpires do. Aside from the obvious reasons (sand in the eyes), umpires just stop calling time. Signal the pitcher that it's time to pitch, and start calling strikes-see how long it takes David Ortiz to get into the batter's box then.)

As a subset of that, officiating in all sports needs to be dramatically improved. I'm really sick of obvious rule violations being ignored in all sports. The thing that got me hottest was during the Philadelphia Eagles football game today, when the Eagles' DeSean Jackson gets tackled halfway to the concession stands without a penalty, and on the other hand, when an Eagle tries to tackle a Raider who isn't yet down on the ground, he gets a flag. It's insane, and it's got to stop.