We’re two days into the Major League Baseball season and there have already been six extra inning games. There where three extra inning games on opening day. The Baltimore Orioles beat the Minnesota Twins 3-2 in 11 innings. Also in 11 innings the Oakland A’s beat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 6-5. While the Milwaukee Brewers beat the San Diego Padres 2-1 in 12 innings. Yesterday there where also three extra inning games starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates beating the Detroit Tigers 13-10 in 13 innings. The Philadelphia Phillies picked up and 11 inning win 5-4 over the Atlanta Braves last night and then in the longest game of these first two days the Miami Marlins beat the Chicago Cubs 2-1 in 17 innings.
Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind watching an extra inning game, but of course the problem everyone seems to have is the time it takes to play these games. Two of these extra inning games took over five hours to play with the longest of them clocking in at just under 5 hours and 30 minutes. Of course this has brought out ideas of how to get extra inning games to end quicker, but let’s face it they’re not that great.
At some of the lower minor league levels they’re actually trying the idea of starting an inning with a runner on 2nd base in extra inning games. I believe that this would actually start in the 11th inning of an extra inning game. Every since I heard this idea I thought it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard until last night.
Since I live in the Chicago area I was watching the Cubs/Marlins game and during commercial breaks or pitching changes things like that I turn on the MLB Network to see if I can catch highlights from the other games going on. While the game was headed to commercial during extra innings I flipped over to see if the MLB Network was taking a look at another game. They just happened to be looking at the Cubs/Marlins game and they where coming back to the studio as I was flipping over to their program.
I’m not sure, but I think it was MLB Tonight that was on. Greg Amsinger was the studio host of the show and had two former major leaguers with him; I think Harold Reynolds was one of them while I think that Dan Plesac might’ve been the other. Anyway as they get back to the studio shot Amsinger is the first ne to talk on camera and he happens to mention that the game is coming up on the five and a half hour mark and makes a comment to the effect that no wants to watch a game like this. Now I kind of stopped in my tracks after he said this because I kind of thought his job depends on these games, but of course he had an idea that would revolutionize extra innings.
Amsinger’s proposal was that when a game goes into extra innings teams would only be allow to have two players with their feet in the outfield grass. Now I thought putting a runner on 2nd base was a stupid idea, but this is easily the dumbest idea I’ve heard to speed up a baseball game. Amsinger went on to say that it would help bring athleticism back to baseball and would make like Jarrod Dyson more important. He mentioned another players name, but I forgot who he said.
Could you just see a game going into extra innings in San Francisco and you only get to send two outfields out for an inning in AT&T Park. That sounds like it would be an exciting time for those two guys.
Then I started thinking that maybe Amsinger had a long career in baseball and maybe it’s an idea that should be looked into. I couldn’t find any information on Amsinger ever playing an inning of baseball at the professional level or even working for a baseball team, but he has been working at the MLB Network since 2009; so I guess he thinks that entitles him to his opinion on baseball. Now f course this doesn’t, but he had no issue at all throwing this incredibly stupid idea out there. I was actually quite surprised that the two former professional baseball players sitting at the desk with Amsinger didn’t say anything about his idea. To be honest I didn’t stick around for more than another minute or so after that dumb idea came out of Amsinger’s mouth as I wanted to get back to the Cubs/Marlins game; so maybe one of them spoke up and told him what a moron he was.
I’m hoping that there is someone at the MLB Network that was able to inform Amsinger what a stupid idea he had was and that maybe he should just concentrate on doing his job.
Now one of the other problems Major League Baseball seems to have is getting young people to watch an entire game. Last night I think I cam e across something that might be an issue with that.
As the Cubs/Marlins game was headed into the Top of the 11th inning Cubs Broadcaster Len Kasper went with a joke that has been made millions upon millions of times. He used a line from the movie This is Spinal Tap. In the movie they’re talking about an amplifier because “it goes to 11”. Being an older guy I got the joke right away and knew where he was going with it. This is Spinal Tap was released in 1984. How many young viewers watching the Cubs/Marlins game at that time had any idea what he was talking about. Then just to make sure we got what he was trying to do when the game came back from commercial Kasper threw out another joke from that movie which is 34 years old.
Now I have to put up with Kasper and his broadcast partner good ole JD, former major league pitcher Jim Deshaies. Now a lot of times I’ll actually mute the sound on the television and listen to the Cubs radio broadcast because of these guys antics. They actually spend as much time talking about food and music as they do baseball and I’m just not sure if they can relate to a young audience that Major League Baseball is trying to attract.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have any issues with the way baseball is played today with the exception of replay taking so long, but I’m an older viewer and I’m not the target audience that they’re trying to attract. Of course being an older viewer I don’t really have any way for baseball to try and relate to a younger audience, but I’d be very interested in listening to your ideas. Do you have a way for baseball to get younger viewers to watch their game? If so feel free to leave it in the comment section and will discuss it on the Sports Time Radio podcast.
Speaking of the podcast it airs live on BlogTalkRadio.com, but it’s also available for you to listen to anytime you want on TuneIn.com.
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