Baseball has been here before. It may have stepped back
from the edge of a work-stoppage cliff this season, but
it remains in peril. As in 1968, the dulling of its product
has eroded its fan base and that hard-to-define but easily
recognized currency of entertainment known as “buzz.”
After offense in 1968 fell to 6.84 runs per game, fewer
than any season except ’08, and 14 of 20 teams drew
fewer than 15,000 fans per game, owners undertook a
whole-house renovation. Over the next five seasons, they
shrunk the strike zone, lowered the mound, changed
commissioners, added four teams, expanded the playoffs
and implemented the designated hitter.
Offense revived immediately. The growth of attendance
and “buzz” took longer. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s—
thanks to free agency—that baseball took off.
Bottoming out again, baseball is embarking on
another major renovation. As it did in the wake of 1968,
Major League Baseball will look extremely different
over the next five years—the life of the recent collective
bargaining agreement—because its attraction as a major
entertainment option depends on it.
In its last pre-COVID-19 season, MLB’s attendance was
down 14% from its apex in 2007, largely because games
had grown 15 minutes longer. Last year fans had to wait,
on average, four minutes and seven seconds between
each ball in play, up 28% from ’07.If MLB’s renovation blueprints are correct, by the 2026
World Series baseball will be played faster with more
balls in play, more athleticism and speed, an automated
strike zone, bigger bases, more convenient gambling,
more streaming and new cities.
Baseball survived the lockout; now the time for
change is here.
“I look at it as the start of an ongoing process and a
very real collaboration with the players to get closer to
the very best version of the game,” says Theo Epstein,
the former Red Sox’ and Cubs’ front office executive who
is now an MLB consultant specializing in modernizing
the game. “It’s going to require continual observation
and collaboration and, when called for, the right, subtle
adjustments to make sure the product is as exciting and
entertaining as possible.”
To escape the morass of 1968, MLB made its prepon-
derant goal to add more runs. This time it is fewer strike-
outs. Baseball’s aim in the next five years is to get the
strikeout rate, which was 23.2% last season, to less than
20%, a mark it hasn’t been under since 2013. In ’07, at
the height of attendance, it was 17.1%.
“What we learned last year,” Epstein says, when
experimental rules were tried in the low minors, “is that
no one thing is going to fix the strikeout rate on its own.
It’s a series of small changes.”The most immediate and pressing need
is to revive the public’s flagging interest,
to recapture affections which baseball
has studiously alienated, to reverse the
game’s downward trend in competition
for the entertainment dollar.
—RED SMITH, DEC. 10, 196848