I love baseball. It’s been the love of my life since I was seven years old. I’ve made lifelong friendships playing the game. I spent countless hours in my teenage years working to improve my skills, which taught me the value of discipline. I’ve created amazing memories with my father, traveling across the Midwest to see all the different ballparks.
As a Red Sox fan, I’ve sat diligently for hours, days and months of my life to watch the team I love. My passion for my team and the game has promised a lifetime of hope that has transferred into my view of the world.
But this isn’t about baseball’s effect on me. That’s not interesting, nor important. No, this is about why there are fewer and fewer people like me, who love baseball as much as a loved one. This is about baseball’s regular season being obnoxiously too long and how it needs to be shortened. Now.
The MLB regular season spans 162 games from April to October, a seventh-month span. Each team plays virtually every day while routinely lacking novel storylines. The monotony becomes miserable. Summertime is supposed to be baseball’s time, but it’s quickly turning into football off-season time.
Baseball isn’t always meant to be exciting. It’s a methodical chess match that is played like a marathon, not a sprint. There will always be long, brutal, boring games throughout the summer that garner little attendance or media attention.
Baseball is filled with fun and crazy stats and highlights, so why is it so mundane at times? It’s because so many games simply don’t matter, or at least that’s the perception.
If the Red Sox lose a game in mid-June, I don’t care because I know that they can come out and win tomorrow. Playoff teams typically only win about 58 percent of their games, so losing every so often isn’t a big deal. Why would I watch a game that I know doesn’t matter?
Look, I know a game or two usually decides pennant races, but I don’t think about that, nor do I care about that, in June. Neither do most baseball fans. We want meaningful action all the time.
That’s becoming too much to ask of baseball. Though every game can matter, on the surface, they’re pointless.
What makes it worse is these games take up to three hours. Watching an MLB game can be like listening to Ben Stine in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” The MLB is losing fans and participants because the game is becoming outdated to a younger generation.
Baseball can do a couple things about this. They can create a 142- or 120-game schedule, slightly reducing the amount of meaningless games while keeping intact the sacred longevity of the season.
I don’t think that’s enough, though. Let’s cut it in half and make the season 81 games. Think about it; the whole issue in baseball is that a majority of the regular season games don’t matter. With 81 games, each team will only play about 26 or 27 series throughout the year, as opposed to playing about 54 series now. Each series will matter significantly, making each game matter in the present.
This will likely never happen, but I hope my point is clear; if baseball wants to survive, it needs to make more games matter. Bore and you will die out, baseball. You may be America’s pastime, but that doesn’t guarantee your future in this country.
