The Bane of Baseball

MLB's revenue is catching up to the NFL's. With a record 79.5 million fans attending games this year, hundreds of millions of dollars coming due to television and radio broadcasts and MLB's Internet division generating income above expectations, the game is doing business like never before.

Commissioner Bud Selig said the MLB's revenues are expected to be more than $6 billion this year.

"Imagine that," Selig said. "When you think back to where we were 10, 15 years ago, it's stunning.”

Stunning indeed that MLB revenue has grown so rapidly that the sport is on the verge of catching the NFL, which is expected to gross about $6.3 billion in 2007-08.

"Make no mistake about it. Our sport is more popular than ever and it is still the national pastime," Selig said.

But that’s where I disagree. The evidence shows that baseball is thriving. For only the second time in major league history, the season ended with no club playing .600 ball or better and no team with lower than a .400 winning percentage.* Some call it parity others call it mediocrity, but in any case the league is doing well.

However, to make baseball matter again they league must deal with two problems: terrible television start times, evident during the playoffs, and inconsistent umpiring.

Roughly 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in the Eastern Time Zone. When MLB starts games at 8:30 p.m. ET and it takes 3 hours 30 minutes plus to finish a game, it’s Midnight or later in the East. Only diehard fans are going to stay up and watch the whole game. Baseball is not building the next-generation of fans, because they can’t stay up and watch. It’s a trap and baseball has fallen into it.

Inconsistent umpiring can undo some of baseball gains and the Commissioner’s office needs to step up.

Take Game 6 of the ALCS. Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona struggled through two official innings of work. Of Carmona’s 63 pitches only half got over the plate as strikes.

On the other side Boston’s Curt Schilling, known as a big game pitcher, went seven strong innings striking out five and walking none. Of Schilling’s 90 pitches nearly two-thirds were strikes. I watched the game and Schilling got his marginal pitches called strikes and Carmona did not.

The Strike Zone is clearly defined in MLB’s rules. Selig and his office must monitor how umpires call balls and strikes. Umpires who are inconsistent or who do not use the entire strike zone should be relieved from their home plate duties. Bad officiating drives average fans away from any sport and baseball umpires do a lot more than most other officials.

It’s great that Major League Baseball is making gains. But the league has a way to go to regain its status as the national pastime.

*Blogger’s Note: Boston and Cleveland tied at the top with a .593 winning-percentage and Tampa Bay had the lowest winning percentage at .407. The 600-400 winning percentage spread also occurred in 2000.

The Strike Zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball. (from MLB Rule 2.00 -- Definitions of Terms)