With so much talk about how to speed up the game and make it more appealing to a younger generation, perhaps the solution to making baseball more fun lies within the players and not the rules.
Sure, limiting mound visits and setting a pitch clock help to move the game along for an ever-depleting public attention span. But how about approaching things from a media coverage perspective. In a game obsessed with numbers and statistics, sometimes it is the personality or real-life input from a player that appeals to the new and impressionable fan.
Red Sox fans—and the rest of baseball—were treated to a taste of what could be a game changing new way of integrating fans into the action.
During the last game of Spring Training, Red Sox rightfielder Mookie Betts was mic’d up for an inning in the field. For the most part, the interview was a typical conversation between Betts and the ESPN crew on the game. The real fun came when Cubs’ hitter Kris Bryant lined a shot down the line in right field. Betts, mid-interview and mid-sprint, blurted out, “I ain’t getting this one, boys.”
https://twitter.com/KentMurphy/status/978745006990221313
That’s it. Short. Simple. But fun.
Now it’s unrealistic for teams to mic up players all the time in games that matter but the Betts’ interview was a step in the right direction.
Perhaps a more realistic approach is what Clayton Kershaw provided while in the dugout of one of the Dodgers’ first games of the year. Being that it wasn’t his day to pitch, Kershaw basically just shows up to the park and watches the game. Why not slap a mic on the guy and see what he has to say about the game as an in-the-clubhouse and on-the-field analyst.
Clayton Kershaw on Rich Hill's competitiveness/aggression, and learning from him. "Out-compete the Hitter" pic.twitter.com/onBS6HIsKe
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 2, 2018
Why try and change rules that will only cut down on a few extra minutes of gameplay when you have the players in front of you that can make the game more fun just by injecting some of their own personality into it. The average non-fan is more likely to turn on a game because a star player will be coming into their living room, not because the game will end 10 minutes earlier.
The plan to make baseball fun again is simple: let players be themselves and broadcast it for the whole world to see.