Thursday, June 30, 2011

Fixing MLB: The Season Structure

One of the issues plaguing Major League Baseball is happening right now.

American Leagues pitchers are venturing into uncharted territory having to bat, while most National League teams are adding a mediocre bat to its lineup in the form of a designated hitter. It's the joys of interleague baseball.

Aside from ruining the fun and specialness of the World Series, interleague play creates a lot of matchups that nobody cares about. For every great series like Yankees-Cubs and Angels-Dodgers, there are just as many Rays-Brewers and Rockies-Indians.

MLB should do us all a favor and end this. There's no reason to get excited about playing a team you won't see for another three years.

All-Star Game

Bud Selig has a number of black marks on his tenure as commissioner. One of the bigger ones, calling the 2002 All-Star game in his hometown of Milwaukee an unsatisfactory tie game.

But Selig out-did himself the next year, by "fixing" the Midsummer Classic and making it determine who had home field advantage for the World Series.

It's absurd to have a glorified exhibition actually count.

MLB should abolish the rule today.

Let's actually validate the 162 game regular season and when two teams meet in the World Series, award the one with the best regular season record with home field.

It works for the NHL and NBA. It would be perfect for baseball too.

Shorten the Season

In an effort to make sure baseball stops before Thanksgiving, Selig put a blemish on Opening Day. Rather than starting on the first Monday in April, baseball started on March 31 a Thursday.

That hardly solves the issue that baseball, a summer sport, typically slogs through the unpredictable autumn weather. It's a bad mix.

It would be great to just ax eight games and go back to 154, but that won't every happen. So MLB needs to shorten the postseason. It's very doable, just cut down on travel and off days just plough through the postseason.

There's something wrong that teams can essentially have a two man starting rotation and win a pennant (aka 2001 Diamondbacks).

Teams should have to go four or five deep and mirror the regular season. Just tighten up the postseason would help capitalize on lost potential, since football (both pro and college) doesn't really get good until October.

But these aren't the only tweaks needed to make the game better, and I'll be writing more in the coming weeks.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

MLB Wrong in Discussing Realignment


Any mention of change by Major League Baseball is big news. That's why sports writers coast-to-coast have been giving their two cents on the big "r" word -- realignment.

Commissioner Bud Selig has sanctioned a committee to study a possible shake up, making both the American and National Leagues even with 15 teams a piece. That would be the fair thing to do.

As a baseball traditionalist I wouldn't mind going back to the old days where there were two leagues, no divisions and teams were actually rewarded for playing its full grueling 162-game schedule.

As it stands with 30 major league teams, the only good way to avoid major changes, such as boring interleague games all season, is to bring up a forbidden word -- contraction.

Two 14 team leagues would work perfectly, with the four best making the playoffs, as would two 16 team leagues, but there aren't enough great ball players to fill out 30 teams, much less 32.

Now if MLB were to expand there's not a great option out west, where a new team would be needed. Portland, Ore. is one option, but the city's ill-supported Triple-A team just left. Indianapolis might work in the heartland, but MLB does not need to put another team in the Midwest.

Other top markets all have flaws too. Sacramento cannot support one pro-franchise, and Raleigh and Charlotte, which are in basketball-football states, are also out.

Contraction is a sticky issue, but doable if fairness is truly the aim of "realignment."

The easiest contraction target is Toronto. Sure, the Blue Jays had a few good years in the 90s, but Canada has room for only one true love, hockey.

Miami is the other best option. On a list of 40 things to do in the summer in Miami, going to watch pro-baseball is 41st on the list.

Cutting MLB to 28 teams, would mean more stars per team, and more importantly actually provide a balanced schedule. One teams plays the 13 others, 12 times each, that's 156 games (six less than right now).

With the issue of balancing the leagues out without making some big decisions MLB can focus on fixing its other ailments. More to come on those soon.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

The Pious Arm of the NCAA Must Go

It's been a scandal ridden off-season for college football, with Columbus, Ohio serving as the epicenter.

Beloved Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel basically had no choice but to resign amid a coverup that athletes received extra benefits against collegiate rules. Then, Ohio State's star quarterback Terrelle Pryor said enough is enough to the media pressure, and left school for his role in the mess.

Coupled with what's going on in Columbus, with the fact that athletic administrators in Southern California were packing up its 2004 BCS championship crystal, and the bad headlines are everywhere.

That recent news comes on the heels of a scandal-plagued season, with NCAA investigators scrambling from coast-to-coast, and completely botching the Cam Newton pay-for-play fiasco.

The NCAA is a voluntary association, whose schools agree upon the rules, but it has turned into bureaucracy run amok. The organization has so many arcane rules it cannot even remotely begin to keep track of what's going on at college campuses.

The NCAA did not uncover the Ohio State scandal, and it certainly did not light the world on fire by exposing the Reggie Bush scandal. The NCAA's investigative arm cares a lot more about the public perp walk than the nitty-gritty of catching all the criminals.

So why even waste time with the pretense of the NCAA?

The money's there for major college football to split. The Pac-12 conference just inked a $3 billion, 12-year contract with ESPN and Fox, just the newest of the mega television contracts.

It would be a complicated divorce, but doable.

If the university brass from the Ohio State's, Florida's and Texas' wanted to form an independent group, they could. And it would probably bring change to college football much faster than the NCAA is willing to adapt.

How’s That for Making Love, Not War

Richard Lam captured proof that not everyone was tearing apart Vancouver following the Canucks pitiful loss in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup.

The image of a couple stealing a smooch amid chaos of riots has garnered lots of attention.

While a picture is worth a thousand words, it can also be deceiving. What looked like a romantic embrace was something else entirely, it was a moment of terror.

As the Toronto Star reports the couple, Scott Jones and Alexandra Thomas, got knocked down by a surge of police in riot gear. Just so happened that as Scott was trying to console and calm Alexandra down, a photographer caught the moment on tape.

But no matter the reason, this image has a shot at standing the test of time.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Who Says Hockey Doesn't Matter

Thousands of people gathered Wednesday in downtown Vancouver hoping to watch their Canucks hoist its first every Stanley Cup in 40 years of existence.

As the national anthems were playing, huge banners were hanging inside Rogers Arena with a simple message: "This is what we live for."

As the game ended in an anti-climatic 4-0 thumping at the hands of the Boston Bruins, Vancouver fans turned violent. Hockey really is what they live for north of the border.

The mostly young group of Canuck overturned vehicles and set fire in the blocks around Rogers Arena. The surreal rioting scene capped off one of the strangest and dirtiest Stanley Cup finals in recent memory.

Boston's Nathan Horton and Vancouver's Mason Raymond had their season end prematurely in dirty plays, and a new rule was created to keep players from thrusting their fingers at one another.

In the end the series was determined by Bruins goalie Tim Thomas standing on his head. Thomas, who plays an unorthodox and rather ugly style of net-minding, set the NHL record for most saves in playoff history.

Despite the ugliness, Vancouver which proved its world class hosting the Olympics, will recover.

While the rioting was likely an excuse for drunk, young idiots to go crazy, Canada hasn't had a team raise Lord Stanley's Cup since 1993. You can't say that doesn't bother them.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

A Year Later, Far From Perfect


The moment is etched in baseball history.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga runs over to cover first base for the 27th out in his thus-far perfect game, except it didn't happen.

Umpire Jim Joyce threw his arms wide, calling the runner safe. Replay clearly showed the runner was out. Joyce later apologized for the blown call.

Galarraga struggled after the "28-out perfect game," being demoted to Triple-A Toledo for a time, and finishing the year with 1-7 record and a 4.52 ERA in his final 15 starts with the Tigers.

In January, Armando got a fresh start in Phoenix, but things soured quickly in the desert. In eight starts with Arizona Diamondbacks Galarraga went 3-4 with a 5.91 ERA.

Today, he's laboring with the Triple-A Reno Aces. Galarraga really is slogging it out: 0-1 record, 11.00 ERA, given up 16 hits it two starts, and has 8 K's to 9 walks.

At 29-years-old, Galarraga has some time to turn it around.

But no matter what else happens in Galarraga's career, and right now it doesn't look like much, June 2, 2010, will be remembered forever.

Good or bad, not every ball player is immortal.

Monday, June 6, 2011

You've Gotta Root for Dallas Now

There's an old sports cliche that says it's not over until the final whistle or horn.

Apparently, that doesn't hold true when it comes to planning a victory parade.

A company in south Florida is already soliciting workers for a Miami Heat victory parade via Craigslist.

That's right. The unnamed company wants people to sell Heat Championship gear during the parade IF AND WHEN it happens.

While it's doubtful the group has any ties to the team, it seems ill-advised to start advertising for something that may or may not happen. Last time I checked you have to win four games for a title, not two.

Still, the company deserves some credit for creatively borrowing from its new Heat hero, "WE NEED YOU--NBA CHAMPIONSHIP PARADE. TAKE YOU TALENTS TO SOUTH BEACH."

An eternity ago in sports years, the City of Dallas prematurely released a map of the Mavs victory parade route in 2006. That didn't pan out too well.

Even if you don't care for the NBA, you've gotta root for the Mavs now, even if it's just so you can smile at some real life irony.