Franke: Baseball Is Back
by Mark Franke
I write this on opening day for my local team, the Fort Wayne TinCaps. This being the upper Midwest, the weather report calls for rain to move in just in time for the first pitch. While I love baseball, sitting in 40-degree, rainy weather for an April night game puts that love to the test.
Is there a solution for this? Not for us in the MidWest League, whose teams are mostly congregated around the Great Lakes. Major League Baseball, however, has plenty of teams located in the South and Southwest, plus several with domed stadiums. I am surprised this issue hasn’t been raised by the Players Association as a bargaining point.
The weather at Major League Baseball (MLB) parks is not an issue for me personally as I follow major league games through the MLB network. But even that is getting more and more difficult. In addition to the regional blackout rules — Fort Wayne being blessed with blackouts for the White Sox, Cubs, Tigers and Reds — the Commissioner’s office has figured out how to remove additional games from the MLB subscription to sell them to other networks. By my count, MLB has blacked out games in favor of exclusive broadcast rights for at least two other streaming services and ESPN. Of course the annual MLB subscription rate went up so we pay more for less.
Since I am a lifelong New York Yankees fan, the regional blackout rules shouldn’t affect me but they still do. When the Yankees are playing a Chicago, Detroit or Cincinnati team, the Yankees get blacked out in Fort Wayne. It doesn’t matter where the game is being played; no TV feed for me.
As far as those four regional blackouts go, a fan would need to subscribe to a streaming package that includes them all. I’m not sure such a service exists so additional subscriptions may be needed if your favorite local team is not included. It’s only money.
At least the radio feeds are still available, allowing me to listen to the blacked out games. Baseball is a game made for radio so the announcers are important. One gets comfortable with the home crew, so much so that one develops an intimacy with them. I feel like John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman are old friends, but unfortunately Sterling decided to retire after decades of broadcasting. It will take me several months to restore that comfort level. At least Mike Maahs and John Nolan are back for the TinCaps.
What makes baseball the quintessential America’s game is its immutability. It’s still the same game I grew up watching and playing in the 1950s. You certainly can’t say that about basketball, which bears only a passing resemblance to the game I learned playing for my grade school team. Football has changed as well; just think about what constitutes a pass interference penalty now as opposed to back then.
Any rule changes in baseball have only been on the margin (except for that abomination called the designated hitter). Moving the strike zone, starting a runner on second base during extra innings, and the pitch clock have arguably improved the game without fundamentally altering its nature.
The real threat to baseball, in my humble but biased opinion, is the ascendancy of technology over the human element of the game. It’s not just the quants in the front office analyzing absolutely everything. There is a danger of paralysis by analysis, removing the soul from the game. Why have a manager if the game is prescripted? Do we need umpires if a computer can call balls and strikes? Why not let the technical crew in a darkened room in Manhattan make all the on-field calls? For that matter, why take a chance on an overpaid star making a bad play when we could just put nine robots out there?
Count me out on living in that brave new world.
It seems to me that baseball is no longer a game driven by fan interest, unless a fan is defined as someone placing on-line bets on the game. It is dismaying to see the number of gambling commercials that fund baseball telecasts. Follow the money.
It’s not a good sign that I am becoming depressed about baseball in its opening week. I have waited all winter for the new season to start. Maybe attendance at TinCaps games and watching the Yankees on the MLB network will get me out of this funk. Every game I see takes me back to my childhood, an idyllic time as reconstructed by my very selective memory.
Inclement weather notwithstanding, I will be at tonight’s game as well as most of the other April games. What I won’t promise is that I will stick it out until the ninth inning. That’s the benefit of holding season tickets – there is always another game, if not tomorrow then soon.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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