The response of the powers that be in the game has been both ruthless and stupid. The commissioner was kicked out so owners and players could each do what they wanted. Inevitably, the strike came.
Ever since the illÐfated strike, fan disenchantment with the game has grown from worrisome to frightening. Simply put, most people would rather watch football or basketball, in which "things are happening."
In an effort to win back fans and, more importantly, dollars, both the owners and players agreed to divide the leagues into three divisions and expand the playoffs before the strikeÐshortened 1994 season. Last year marked the first time either league finished with a Central Division champ. The result of this new format has been to extract the allure of winning the pennant, replacing it with a nailÐbiter finish to find out which team gets the wild card. This change has added a great amount of excitement to the stretch run of the season and revived baseball consciousness in cities that had forgotten they even had a team, like Seattle. Luckily, the two best teams in baseball made it to the World Series in spite of the extra series of playoff games. The expanded playoffs came out a winner in everyone's book. However, if the Dodgers had beaten the Braves or the Yankees beaten the Indians, a profound wakeÐup call would have been sounded. FourthÐ rate teams should not make the World Series.
In American hockey, the joke of all professional playoff structures, a hot goalie can help a mediocre team rise to greatness. The Vancouver Canucks made the finals of the Stanley Cup in 1994 after finishing seventh in the West because their goalie stopped everything in sight. A hot pitching staff in baseball could do the same thing. Teams on the brink of playoff berths have traded away boatloads of talent for a premier pitcher in the past. Watch for this technique to become even more important with the rise in free agency and the struggle of small market teams to retain big dollar players.
After this season's strong finish, the players and owners were finally united on at least one front: continuing the changes that would make them more money. The biggest money maker required one of baseball's most sacred traditions to be scrapped. Nevertheless, it was passed unanimously, and has since received lavish praise as a means to excite marginal fans once again. The decision to allow interleague play in Major League Baseball is an enormous mistake. When the nuance of seeing the White Sox play in Wrigley Field wears out after five years, the owners and players are going to be in a severe bind as to what to do next. Marginal fans may come to see something new, but after interleague play is a few years old, these fans will realize that baseball is still baseball.
Also, the mystique of the World Series will be ruined. No longer will two teams, entirely foreign to one another, rise as the best of the best to meet. Instead, these teams will probably have met during the regular season. Here are a few suggestions of things the owners and players might want to consider after marginal fans discover baseball is still baseball: paint the field a different color every day, give prizes to the first 1,500 fans who guessed which color it would be; between innings have opposing team owners arm wrestle one another for charity; create "spikeable" baseball, require pitchers to spike the ball after every strike out. Whatever you do, make baseball exciting.
This brings up the most critical point of all. It is not possible to "make" baseball exciting. Baseball is not about slam dunks and 140 points in a game. It's not about sacks and eighty yard touchdown runs and doing dances after the team scores. Baseball is about precision and endurance and tension. The reason it is the national pasttime is because every American knows the game. They know the importance of staying down on a ground ball, or at least the words to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Baseball is a game to watch and analyze and admire, but it has never been the thing to do if you're in the mood for a lot of action.
In the end baseball will endure, boring though it may be. The changing face of the professional game can never stop the simplicity of the game at its heart. Baseball will remain a fixture in America's cultural landscape even after the Yankees play at Shea Stadium. It remained a fixture even when they did not.