All loyal Jeff Reporters know that baseball is one of, if not the, least favorite sports that are popular in this country. Despite my feelings towards baseball, there are so many people out there that are extremely passionate about it. As much as I love football and the Chiefs, there are people who love baseball that much and their respective teams. This has lead me to question why I detest baseball so much, it would make sense for me to like it, lots of stats involved, lots of analysis, longest season of any professional sport, etc. So what is it exactly that has turned me off to baseball. Well I have searched long and hard to find the answers of why I dislike baseball, and since this is the Jeff Report, I have done one better and given you the ways I think you could improve baseball and make me interested again.
The biggest thing that I think people don’t often talk about and has perplexed me for years is the difference in the size of the baseball diamond. Seriously? Is this for real? How do people not talk about this more? Let’s put this into perspective and compare it to other sports. Every other sport has rigid rules about exactly how large the playing field should be. A football field is 100 (with 10 yard end zones on either end) yards long and 53 1/2 yards wide, everywhere. A basketball court is 94 feet and the goal is 10 feet high, everywhere (this is played up in the movie “Hoosiers” where Gene Hackman measures the goal and makes everyone realize that it’s the same height as the one they use back home). Finally, hockey rinks are 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. All of these are standard sizes for their sports.
Baseball has no standard. Now, granted, they standardize the size of the infield diamond itself, how far each base is from each other and how high the pitching mound is off the ground (more on that later), but the outfield wall is not standardized. It would be one thing if the game was played mostly in the infield, but the outfield wall represents the ability to score. The idea of sports is supposed to be that what you can do in one place, you can take that to the bank and do it in any place you play. That is not true in baseball. A homerun in one ballpark may not be a home run in another. So if you are playing in the 7th game of the world series, down by one with a man on in the bottom of the ninth and two outs and you stroke the ball, but the park you’re in is 10 feet further than your home park, then you lose and it’s game over, but you would’ve won in another park. How is that in any way fair or equitable?
Baseball fans love their stats, so let’s back this up with some stats. Let’s take my home ballpark, Kauffmann Stadium. According andrewclem.com Kauffman Stadium is 330 ft. to left field, 410 to center, and 330 to right field. The fence height is 9 ft. tall. Let’s compare that to Fenway Park where the Red Sox play: Fenway is 310 to left field, 390 to center, and 302 to right field, on top of that the fence in left field is 37 feet high, 18 ft. tall in center, and 5 ft. tall in right field. That means to right field a player could hit the ball 28 ft. shorter and 3 ft. lower and they would still get a home run in Fenway. Am I the only one who sees this as ubelievable? What, just because baseball is the oldest sport in America and “America’s Pass Time” (not really anymore, we all know it’s football now) it gets a pass on fundamental rules of sport? How am I the only one to mention this, am I taking crazy pills?
Imagine this in other sports. I know for sure that I would hate if when KU had to go play Mizzou if MU had 12 feet high basketball goals. You think people would enjoy coming to Kansas City to play the Chiefs if the goalposts were half as wide and the field was 120 yards long instead of 100? What if the Nashville Predators’ goals were 2 feet wider than the rest of the league? There would be an outcry that it’s illegal and detracts from the integrity of the game, yet, with baseball nobody seems to care and actually likes the difference in ball park size. This is asinine. What makes it worse is that teams are allowed carte blanche to change the size of their field and their fences at will. Let’s go ahead and move the fences in 10 feet, well, what about all the hits that landed 10 feet short last year and in years past? Oh well, that’s not a big deal, but when it comes to steroids changing the game and corrupting records, baseball is up in arms. Ridiculous.
That was one of my biggest quantifiable beef’s with Baseball, but here is my next biggest beef: there is very little strategy involved. Baseball purists will be up in arms about this comment I’m sure, but it is fact. There are strategic moves that a manager can make and different things a team can do with how they attack a hitter and position the D, but mostly it’s just about having the best players. If you have the best pitchers you’re gonna win most of the time, if you have good hitters, you’re gonna score runs more often than not, you can’t outscheme you’re opponent in baseball. Granted, you can choose to pitch to a certain hitter a certain way, but if he is good enough he’s gonna hit whatever pitch you throw there’s no way around it. Same goes for pitching, even if you have the best hitter, if the pitcher is better, there is nothing you can do about it, he’s gonna get you.
This is not the case in other sports. You can double team in basketball, play box and one, play zone or whatever you like. In football you can double team their best player, you can stack the box, you can not throw at their best d-back or run away from their best lineman. In these and other sports you can hide your worst player and take their best out of commission. Purists will argue that that is what is good about baseball that you can’t do this, but for me, that’s the best part about sport is finding that way to get an advantage over your opponent and you can’t do that with baseball.
Next, a big gripe I have is that the season is far too long. 162 games? That is a brutal, epically long season. For some reason baseball has felt the need over the years to increase the length of the season. I’m sure the thinking goes something like this: “we just don’t have enough games to figure out who the clear cut best teams are, we need more to be sure.” Maybe when there were no playoffs and the best teams in each league just went straight to the World Series, maybe. But with playoffs, this is not the case. Especially when you need 162 games to figure out the best teams, then give them 5 games to sort it out in the first round of the playoffs. How is that in any way indicative of the season? It’s not, is the answer.
Finally, another major reason I don’t like baseball is because of the Royals’ luck since I have been born. Now, this is only half the fault of Major League Baseball the other fault belongs to the Royals’ tepid ownership over the last 25 years. However, baseball’s salary and profit sharing structure is also to blame. Their poor ability to make the league equitable in its spread of money and lack of control for keeping teams from spending crazy amounts of money (looking at you Yankees and Red Sox) is inexcusable. The system, as it is, is set up for teams like the Royals to be non-competitive. The only hope is to do what the Twins or the Rays have done and foster the farm system, hope you have picked the right players, and hope they all develop at the same time.
Playoff baseball is something I have never experienced but I could get excited about it. If the Royals were doing well and would make the playoffs I would go to a lot more games and I would be a better fan. I still follow the Royals and support them over any other team, I’m not a bandwagon fan, just not a very big baseball fan. However, if the Royals were legit and made the playoffs, playoff baseball is something I could get behind. While I would still chose a regular season Chiefs game than a playoff Royals game, the fact still remains that I would get excited about the Royals in the playoffs.
Now, I won't just bitch and run, stay tuned for part 2 of how I think you could fix baseball and keep people like myself interested.
Now, I won't just bitch and run, stay tuned for part 2 of how I think you could fix baseball and keep people like myself interested.
Thank you for this Jeff...I was just telling people how the world series teams are decided way too easily. Also, it's hard for me to put baseball in the "Sports" category. It's like golf for me, as long as you're technically sound, you can be amazing, no athleticism necessary.
ReplyDeleteI think you've made some valid points, but I think your comparison of baseball fields to other sports is misguided. Obviously in baseball you do not need to hit the ball over the fence to score runs. In fact (and without support), I'd guess that most runs are scored on in-the-park hits. Accordingly, the size of the field does not fundamentally change the ability of any team to score runs. However, the ability of a home team to change the height of the basket in a basketball game would fundamentally change the ability of the teams to score because you can only score by making baskets on that hoop. Underlying this argument is that basketball players, for instance, are trained to play on a 10 foot basket and their shot fully relies on the assumption that the basket is that height. If a basketball player were to go to a court and shoot on a 12 foot basket, their shot would be presumably ineffective. The same is not true for baseball players. While a bigger field may make it harder to hit home runs, they still have the same ability to score runs inside the park. The same argument can be applied to the other comparisons you made (wider hockey goals, longer football fields).
ReplyDeleteRegardless of how you feel about the size of the fields, it shouldn’t take away from the game itself. If you're playing at Kaufmann or Fenway, there are two teams on the same field playing the same game. The winner is the winner based on the teams, not the field. Any player could have hit that home run over the short fence – just because it was the walk off run shouldn't call the field into question.
Lastly, as a practical matter, I think the reason baseball is without a standard for field size is because of the stadiums themselves. Stadiums that hold football, hockey, soccer, and basketball typically are in arenas that hold more than one sport or activity. Basketball for instance is often in the same arena that hockey is played. Football often has a track around it and is also used for soccer. Accordingly, standards are necessary to be able to use the space as a multi-purpose fields/arena. Conversely, baseball stadiums are only used for baseball. Thus, the size and shape of the field will affect no other activity. If you buy none of my arguments, at least consider this as the practical reason to why there’s a difference.
You do refute my point well, the idea that a basketball player trains on a 10 foot goal and develops their muscles with that in mind whereas a baseball players trains to hit and it they don't train to hit 330 ft as opposed to 305 ft. However, I don't buy that they are "two teams on the field playing the same game and the size of the field shouldn't matter."
ReplyDeleteIf you have a power hitter up, and you are playing him close to the wall and he hits to the middle outfield, you're chance of getting to it is less if the field is 330 ft as opposed to 310 feet. That's 20 extra feet to play with as a hitter and more ground to cover on defense, thereby making it easier or harder to score depending on the size of the field.
Let's throw out the 12 foot rim argument and look at different arenas having different distances of free throw lines or three point lines. This doesn't change how you've trained, but makes it harder or easier depending on the place you play and therefore doesn't make your play equal on every court. Point being the size of the field does have an effect on the game and that should be taken out to make the games more equal and exciting. I don't think Barry Bonds hits 73 homers if he plays in Kauffmann stadium.
As for the practical matter based on baseball stadiums being stand alone, well in the early days most of them shared the field with football teams and they were still different size, now they are mostly stand alone but that should just make it easier to be standardized.