Friday Feature: March 4, 2022
By: Vinny Pagano
I do not know if you have realized that I am a baseball fan, besides a sportswriter. That means there is some emotion behind my words when I discuss it and if you have not noticed, I wear those emotions on my sleeve. If you have heard any of my new revamped podcasts, In The Sports Zone, it has become a commentary-based show and I have taken more than a few minutes to talk about the crisis in Major league Baseball. This is becoming more than just the owners versus the players. It is starting to morph into a discussion of what is or has become our national pastime. I am not going to sit here and rewrite everything I said on my podcasts. Hopefully you can find time to listen to them for yourself. They can be heard on demand at Spotify. Just search “In The Sports Zone with Vinny Pagano,” mark as a favorite and then you are always just a point and click away.
So, the point I will try to make today is that they need to change the game, not just keep adjusting the CBA. The dollars and cents will always have to be adjusted and re-evaluated in any professional organization. That is just the nature of the beast. But each time they have a prolonged discussion about the financial aspect of the game, the purity of the game loses something, and many fans become disgusted with the greed, me included, and turn to other ways to pass our time. In this age of instant gratification, normal sports fans want to be excited on every play. The average MLB games take almost three hours, most of them in direct sunlight or chill of a summer’s night. We need to get the game to under 2.5 hours and make some changes to make the game more explosive and exciting for fans. The MLB did just sign the designated hitter rule into effect for both the National and American Leagues, this should make the game a little more exciting since most pitchers are not good hitters and have become a dead spot in the lineup. This change however did upset traditional baseball fans who like to see the game played out in what is called “small ball” doing whatever it takes to advance the runner and score runs. The Designated Hitter, or DH, is more of a power hitter put into the lineup to score runs on one swing of the bat. It depends on who you ask on how this rule is accepted. MLB also did away with testing for Steroids. This might not seem important to some nowadays, but this also will make the sport a more explosive and run scoring game. That could be good but do not forget what happens when runs are scored in abundance, a pitching change. What is the most time-consuming thing during the end of games, pitching changes.
Be careful what you wish for with all those runs being scored. To help with the problem of excessive pitching times, might I suggest a pitch clock, timing in-between pitches. This is not the complete answer, but it is a start. Even baby steps forward would be progress at this point, eventually we might just get to where baseball needs to be, back on top as our national pastime!
– Vinny Pagano is the Sports Editor for Columbus County News and Sports Director for WTXY Kool 103.9FM & AM1540. Local Sports stories, as well as questions and comments can be submitted to Vinny at [email protected]
