Baseball is my favorite sport. I could watch a baseball game any time and be relatively happy. It doesn’t even have to be my team, as long as it’s baseball. It puzzles me that the people who are supposed to be promoting the game don’t seem to agree with me.
The commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, doesn’t even seem to agree with me that baseball is good and fun. I’m often unsure whether he even likes the game. He seems to want to tell anyone who will listen what’s wrong with baseball. And a huge chunk of the announcers act like their being put out if a game goes longer than three hours. As a fan, it’s frustrating.
I’m not trying to say the game is perfect. There’s still a drug problem. If I had my way, I’d get rid of the DH and interleague play. I’d bring back the balanced schedule. I’d look for ways to make hitters embarrassed by strikeouts and pitchers embarrassed by walks. I might even move the fences back where possible to encourage more doubles and triples. But none of that is going to happen, so I don’t spend my time talking about it. The game’s not perfect, but it’s good as it is.
I’d be happy if the commissioner and the announcers could start being positive about the sport they work in. The people who watch watch because they like it. They don’t want to hear all the complaints all the time. And if we’re trying to get new people to watch, I think it would work a lot better to focus on how awesome Mookie Betts, Max Scherzer, Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout are than pointing out all of the game’s problems all the time. Accentuate the positive and they can make a great game even more enjoyable.
