Major League Baseball Hears the Sound of Cricket
Breaking News from The Off-Base Newsdesk* at Foul Territory…
NEW YORK – In order to cultivate its global presence, Major League Baseball is always looking to expand its appeal to the fans of other sports. Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world behind only soccer, with an estimated 2.5 billion fans worldwide.
One of cricket’s most distinguishing features are its three to five day matches which run approximately six hours per day. In honor of the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, MLB will transform every team’s usual weekend series of three games into one singular game.
While the league has expressed a great deal of interest in speeding up the game’s pace of play, they now appear to be throwing all of that out the window. Baseball is chock full of traditions and rules that have lasted over a 100-years and has remained unchanged for the most part of the millennia. However, MLB is willing to scuttle all that if it can grab a share of the market dominance that Cricket enjoys.
But how do you transform a game that usually lasts three to four hours into three to four days? You would need someone involved who really didn’t care about baseball and its rich history. Commissioner Rob Manfred is the perfect man for the job. His resume of brilliant ideas includes adding a pitch clock, limiting a team’s relief pitchers and starting extra innings with a runner on second base.
Manfred stated in a conference call, “Ernie Banks famously said, ‘It’s a great day for a ball game, let’s play two.’ And now I say, ‘It’s a great weekend for a ballgame. Let’s play one.’”
New rules for batters will be enforced for the weekend. They include increasing the number of strikes to five. Also, every batter must step out of the batter’s box after each pitch and must not enter the box again for thirty seconds which will be monitored by QuesTek.
There will also be an increase in pitching changes. After one time through the lineup, the opposing team must make a pitching change. And the number of practice tosses increase to 15 from the current eight. The catcher must physically deliver a new ball every time a ball has been taken out of play. The infielders must go to the pitcher’s mound after every out and talk with their gloves in their face for a minimum of two minutes.
The long-standing tradition of the seventh inning stretch, which dates back to 1910 when President William Howard Taft stretched his legs, will morph into the seventh inning nap where both players and fans alike take a 20-minute snooze. And instead of the iconic song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” the stadium will play the Eagles Greatest Hits album in its entirety.
As a result of these proposed changes, revenue is expected to skyrocket in three different ways. First, fans will be spending much more time at the ballpark and so the concession stands will be open even longer, possibly never closing. MLB will open up in media markets where cricket enjoys popularity in the following countries: India, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, and England. Finally, the amount of time for commercial breaks will increase and allow for opportunities to show infomercials during the game.
Fox’s lead play-by-play announcer Joe Buck said, “I love these changes, now there is more time during the game for me to talk how much more I know than everybody else. What’s better than that? Answer: Nothing. See? You didn’t even know that!”
* Off-Base is defined as “mistaken or misinformed; not aligned with reality.” Articles appearing in the Off-Base column of Foul Territory are not meant to be taken seriously and anyone doing so would themselves be considered off-base.
