Even though I'm a big fan of Major League Baseball (actually all baseball), a true fan is able to look at the sport and spot the problems that need fixing. To think your favorite sport is perfect, is either being blind to its pitfalls or ignorant to the negatives within it. Every sport has things wrong with it and here I present to you, the five things wrong with the MLB.
1. The Home Plate Collision Rule: MLB attempted to prevent injuries to catchers by creating a rule that forces the runner to avoid the catcher. Injuries in the past to all-stars such as Buster Posey and Ray Fosse led to the creation of this rule. The problem is that the rule is left with too much of a gray area for the umpires to interpret the rule. When players, managers, and fans can't tell if the rule is broken and many times the replay crew in the New York headquarters has to make the call, there is a flaw in the rule. A rule in baseball must be clear cut and as close to black and white as possible.
2. The Los Angeles Dodgers' Television Deal With Time Warner: In a sport that needs to capture the enthusiasm from a youthful generation to grow, the Dodgers deal alienates a lot of their local fans. Only people subscribing to Time Warner Cable are able to watch the games on live television. The biggest problem with this is that in an industry that is almost monopoly like, with cable companies owning rights to particular cities, many fans don't even have that choice to switch over to Time Warner. Long Beach, the second largest city in Los Angeles County is a city in this category. Five hundred thousand residents, but their city utilizes Cox Communications, meaning that Dodgers fans have to leave the city and find a bar or family member's house that is in a Time Warner city, to watch a game. This alienates current Dodgers fans and either creates future Angels fans in the youth demographic or even worse, hurts the future of baseball in general by taking away the ability for fans to grow up with the game. What's worse is that Time Warner raised their prices by $10 a month to compensate for the deal they made.
3. The 2nd Wildcard Spot: To create even more hype and build revenue that the MLB pulls in during the playoffs, they expanded the amount of teams to make the playoffs to five in a league. Three division winners and two wildcards. The two wildcard teams must play each other in a one game, do or die to play in the rest of the playoffs. It's too many teams. The MLB needs to revert back to four teams a league, which would only include one wildcard team. If there is ever another expansion, the MLB can create four divisions in each league consisting of four teams and still have four teams in each league in the playoffs.
4. The Ban of Shoeless Joe Jackson: Linked to the Black Sox scandal, eight White Sox players who played in the 1919 World Series, were banned for life for throwing the Series. Believed to have been bribed by professional gamblers and mobsters including mob boss Arnold Rothstein, the eight players were part of a conspiracy to throw the Series to supplement their low income. The MLB Reserve clause back then, allowed a team to offer any amount to a player and if the player rejected it, they would not be allowed to play in the MLB again. Charles Comiskey, the owner of the White Sox was notorious for lowballing his players. Eight players were accused of throwing the Series including Jackson, but Jackson's stats didn't appear to be those of a man throwing any of the games. He his .375, hit a homerun (in a time when they weren't hit that often), three doubles, and six RBI's. Teammates of his also went on to tell those who listened that he never accepted any money, nor was part of the scandal. Also no physical evidence ever showed that he was guilty.
5. Ban All Tobacco: In a sport that named the area where pitchers warm up (the bullpen), after the advertising signs of Bull Durham Tobacco that adorned them, baseball clearly had a long association with tobacco. One of the stereotypes of a ballplayer is the wads of chewing tobacco they shove in their mouth. As far back as 1909, players such as Honus Wagner demand the American Tobacco Company to refrain from releasing his baseball card along with packages of chewing tobacco. Unfortunately as far back as the conception of the sport, tobacco had already become common place on the field. The MLB eventually banned players from smoking in baseball facilities and furthered the prevention by banning tobacco companies from giving players free product in the clubhouses of the stadiums. In 1993, professional baseball took it a step further by banning players, coaches, and managers from using chewing tobacco on the field or in the vicinity of the stadium. Unfortunately it is still allowed in the Major League level. Former all-star baseball player Lenny Dystra, an addict to chewing tobacco, once stated, "They call me "Nails" because they say I'm as tough as nails. But I'm not tough enough to beat the spit-tobacco habit. Copy my hustle, copy my determination. But don't copy my spit-tobacco habit." Other Hall of Fame legends such as Babe Ruth and more recently, Tony Gwynn, were all diagnosed with cancer in the oral regions, attributed to their chewing tobacco use.
