EVERTHING WRONG WITH MAJOR LEAGUE #BASEBALL (#MLB) in 2023

Baseball is in my family. My dad’s father, Sam “Seed” Fleischmann, and his brother, Saul “Sakie,” played in the minors for the St. Louis Browns, and Sakie briefly played for the Browns. I am named after him.

My grandpa taught my brother, Jon, and me (we are 13 months apart in age) to play whiffle ball, then slow pitch baseball before we entered elementary school. Jon got to play in little league (called “Khoury League, locally), but I did not, even though I was a great hitter and a fast runner and I could catch very well. (I never did learn to throw far or pitch, though.)

Girls weren’t allowed to play little league until my 11-years-younger sister, Lauri, entered those age groups in another era (1970s vs. 1960s). She became one of the first (and best) girls in the Khoury League in Olivette, Missouri. I had to turn to other sports as I got older.

My dad, Ira Fleischmann, was convinced by his brother-in-law, Don Levin, to play softball on an adult men’s Jewish league in University City in the early 1960s. My dad was not an enthusiastic player, though, and he quit soon after.

All through high school in the early 1970s in St. Louis County and St Louis City, Missouri, anyone who had “straight ‘A’s” in the school year’s third quarter (a GPA of 3.5 or better) could get 3 free bleacher seats to summer Cardinals’ baseball home games. My honored friends and I would use our tickets to eat the hot dogs and get high in the bleachers. In those years, there was never a home game televised; it was only broadcast on AM radio. We brought one or two transistors (later, “boom boxes”) so we’d know what was happening, since we were sitting so far away and so high up (in the now-destroyed Busch stadium) we couldn’t see much at all. Every now and then, something would actually happen, and we’d cheer.

I mentored and sponsored girls’ softball team players when I taught 8th graders in Vermont. I cribbed to pass the test then worked the summer of 1989 as a softball umpire for the men’s league in Keene, New Hampshire.

Continuing the family baseball/softball connections:
—My mother’s second husband, Sylvester “Les” Harris, was in the minor leagues in the 1940s-early ’50s; she went with him to his reunion in the 1990s.
—My son, Merlyn, is married to Lauren Harrison, whose father (and grandfather) work(ed) as pitchers, catchers, and then scouts in the MLB; my DIL’s father, R. J. Harrison, still scouts for the Tampa Bay Rays.
—One of my nephews, Noah Stern, was chosen as a pitcher for two different “D” division college baseball teams (he graduated a few years ago).
—His dad, Rick Stern (and sometimes, Noah, when he’s in town), plays adult softball in the Chicago north shore suburbs.

I tell you all this to establish my “credentials, I suppose. I’m not just a whiner or someone who doesn’t understand the game.

I’m watching the early parts of most St. Louis Cardinals’ games with my 91-YO mother because she has low vision and the announcers on ALL the TV stations SUCK at doing play-by-play (I miss Harry Caray!).

That is my first complaint: TV baseball announcers. ALL of them are inadequate and the people who pay them seem fine with it. These current announcers are much too interested in hearing themselves talk about inane things (REALLY STUPID STUFF), reciting obscure statistics almost no one cares about, and rehashing old games/plays. They do not seem the least bit concerned that they are responsible for letting viewers know what is actually happening in the game.

They also have terrible grammar, wrong word choices, odd turns of phrase that aren’t explained, and very large gaps in what they do choose to report. I would fire them all, if they can’t be retrained.
They need to call the games on the radio for a few years to get better announcer chops!

I do a better play-by-play and informing regarding players’ and pitchers’ stats than all of them put together.

Complaint number two: the pitch clock rules (see below). This is a possibly good idea gone terribly wrong, IMO. Yes, baseball games can be interminably long. But, this is NOT the answer.
I’m the first one to get frustrated with all the superstitious, oddly ritualistic, fidgety, time-wasting fooling around that most pitchers and batters (used to?) do. Bull Durham aside, WHY?

So much adjusting and removing/replacing their gloves, hats/helmets, baseballs and/or bats. The rosin bag antics, the pitchers’ feet digging new ruts on the mound, the constant checking of the runners and ridiculous numbers of throw-to-base plays that amount to nothing: these could ALL go away and I’d be happier.

Don’t even get me started on the disgusting spitting, licking, and other oral fixation habits almost all players engage in, on the field and in the dugout. YUCK. I’m all for limiting ALL of that.
But, to pick on pitchers or batters and say their times (and rituals) are limited isn’t fair or logical, unless the MLB plans to make ALL of those behaviors prohibited.

What about the runners who gesture to “god,” “jesus,” or whomever when they get hits? How about the ones who make team-related gestures once on base? Should we limit the batters who generally waste time with lengthy divesting of batting equipment and safety items once on base? Why aren’t runners’ times in each of these types of semi-time-outs limited?

Here are the new (2023) pitch clock rules:
—The pitcher must begin his motion to deliver the pitch before the expiration of the pitch timer. Pitchers who violate the timer are charged with an automatic ball.
—Batters who violate the timer are charged with an automatic strike.
—Batters must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the 8-second mark or else be charged with an automatic strike.
—With runners on base, the timer resets if the pitcher attempts a pickoff or steps off the rubber.
—Pitchers are limited to two disengagements (pickoff attempts or step-offs) per plate appearance. However, this limit is reset if a runner or runners advance during the plate appearance.
—If a third pickoff attempt is made, the runner automatically advances one base if the pickoff attempt is not successful.
—Mound visits, injury timeouts and offensive team timeouts do not count as a disengagement.
—If a team has used up all five of its allotted mound visits prior to the ninth inning, that team will receive an additional mound visit in the ninth inning. This effectively serves as an additional disengagement.
—Umpires may provide extra time if warranted by special circumstances.
(So if, as an example, a catcher were to be thrown out on the bases to end the previous half-inning and needed additional time to put on his catching gear, the umpire could allow it.)
[from: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-larger-bases-shiftshttps://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-larger-bases-shifts ]

Third and most serious complaint: UMPIRES. In 2018, “based on 11 seasons of Major League Baseball data, over four million pitches culled and analyzed over two months by Boston University Master Lecturer Mark T. Williams and a team of graduate students” found that a total of over 34,000 balls-strikes calls made by human umps were WRONG! “MLB umpires make certain incorrect calls at least 20 percent of the time, or one in every five calls….These controllable errors impact players, managers, batters, pitchers, performance statistics, game outcomes, and even the big business of fantasy baseball. They shorten careers and diminish fan experience. Pace of play is also impeded.” https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/mlb-umpires-strike-zone-accuracy/

Furthermore, there is almost no accountability or recourse when the umps are wrong at home plate. “MLB has begun evaluating umpires with internal systems (such as Trackman), [but] their performance statistics are not widely known, tracked, or readily shared. Fans can recite starting pitcher information but when it comes to who is umpiring behind home plate and their error rate, these relevant statistics are not public.”

Standardizing umpires’ calls is even harder in the infield or outfield, since not all stadiums have cameras in the same places, each stadium has its own size (with varying “home run” or “double” lines/areas for the ball to hit past), and because sometimes the umpire’s view of a runner and player on a base is obscured, so they can’t always tell who “got there first.”

Luckily, managers can use someone besides the umpire on the field (the New York city panel of “replay analysts,” who watch all video available and make the final call). Team managers can request this review of a call if they believe an ump blew a call at a base or elsewhere (but not for home plate’s balls and strikes), but only within 20 seconds of that call.

These “challenge” calls are limited (ONE per manager per game, in 2023), so have to be well-considered. It can be totally worthwhile, though: “50-60% of contests were successful, overturning the original call.”
[from: https://mlbrun.com/mlb-challenge-rules]

Finally, my largest complaint about the entire umpire system is that they are based on an outmoded, violent model of militaristic, patriarchal, dictatorship rulers that have no place in a game or sport. This is not life-and-death decision-making, here. It’s baseball, for pity’s sake!

There is plenty of room for reversing decisions, acknowledging mistakes, recognizing human error, and being collaborative, all to enjoy the game more. Since there is already a review/challenge method, it ought to be expanded and used more freely. Umpires should NEVER be able to eject anyone merely for disagreeing or arguing, but there could be limits as to how long a disagreement goes on before the challenge must be called.

We should not be complicit in shoring up some old, awful way of autocratically determining everything to do with deciding what/who is out or safe (what it’s all about, yes?).

This brings me to my fourth and biggest complaint: the commercialization of the entire experience of baseball and all major sports.

I don’t know when this became the norm, but EVERYTHING is/displays an ad for some business or corporation. Every announcement is peppered with plugs and attributional ads (some company “sponsors” almost every word out of their mouths, every image, every stat. Players are walking ads for not one or two but three or more companies’ logos on their sleeves, hats, fronts and/or backs of their shirts, safety equipment, sunglasses, etc. Every TV angle has logos or ads, with several rotating displays behind every home plate and outfield section. Every part of the stadium, inside and out, INCLUDING parking areas, outer walls, polls, etc., have posts and are covered with/were built with embedded ads and logos for companies that have NOTHING to do with the sport. The names of most stadiums, roofs of most dugouts, programs, food containers, vendors’ and delivery peeps’ clothing and hats, and every visible part of the announcers’ booth scream to the viewers: BUY SOMETHING.

Worse, to say almost anything about the pitchers, the line-up, field positions, or any pitch or play, announcers have to credit out loud some company for “providing” that information (BS) while their logo is already on the on-screen info boxes. In between ANYTHING (even for 5 – 10 seconds) they now stick a “brief” ad or plug.

Modern TV announcers won’t give any MLB game a decent play-by-play, but they’re perfectly willing to be hucksters.

The entire sport (EVERY major sport, I bet) has been co-opted, and I’m disgusted.

Fifth, a more personal complaint: blackout dates. MLB and owners want EVEN MORE MONEY (billions aren’t enough?!), so they “black out” about two games each month, posting them only for viewers who pay extra (buying the MLB TV package, paying for Facebook Live or Apple+ TV, etc. “10 regular season games will be carried exclusively on either FOX (6), ESPN (2), Apple TV+ (1) or Peacock (1) as part of Major League Baseball’s national television packages.”

THIS SUCKS, especially for people on fixed incomes.

My mom has to listen to the play-by-play on her ancient transistor on those game days. Radio broadcasts have better announcing, though, and fewer ads (none visual!), so perhaps that’s a draw and not a drawback!

Sixth, “Wildcard” shenanigans! (from last year but may apply any year, apparently). MLB installed a new “system” whereby a team that won more games could be ousted from the playoffs by lessor team, by winning 2 out of 3 games in one Wildcard series in the post-season! “The first rounds of the [2022] postseason saw three 100-win teams lose to opponents with worse records.” https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/17/have-mlbs-revamped-playoffs-made-the-baseball-season-an-unfair-mockery

This meant that two teams who were NOT “winners” in any way except for these last rounds faced each other in the “World” series (which is already a misnomer, anyway). Ridiculous.

ROTTEN and unfair! DITCH THIS!

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In case there are any fans left, here is the Cardinals’ regular season’s games’ schedule (Cards are unlikely to make any playoffs this year): https://www.ballysports.com/midwest/news/st-louis-cardinals-regular-season-television-schedule

I know it’s blurry, here, so try this: https://www.mlb.com/cardinals/schedule/printable

Those are my MLB baseball rants. What are yours? Comment here: http://www.sallyember.com/blog

Play ball!