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Thrown Out of a Moving Vehicle.
This month prr debuts with (what appears to be) a controversial suggestion in the world of baseball. I'll admit, I do not follow baseball, and so I'm not sure just how controversial it is. Is it the same as asking football fans if the rules of overtime should be reworked?
1) Decreased game attendenceQuote:
Originally posted by prr
2) Increased ticket prices
3) More player injuries in the outfield (and possibly running the bases)
1&2 because of the drastic changes to dimensions of the ballpark, and #3 just because of all "stretched" out plays you're trying to force.
I'll admit, I'd be interested seeing this plan in action as some bizarre exibition. Or in fifty years when we finally have the CLB (Cyborg League Baseball).
No offense guys, but the only thing that would make baseball interesting to me is if some of the balls had incendiary devices inside them*. But that's just me, and if you are into baseball, I'm sure prr's piece should create lots of debate.
So, presentation 9/10, subject matter 2/10.
* Or, less violent, but just as entertaining - the bat got smaller, and the ball got bigger as time progressed. Just a thought... I'm only trying to help!
I'd pay to watch that sport, but I think other rules would have to be introduced to keep games from being 45-32 and six hours long.
One thing I would definitely love about it is that it would, of necessity, revive the long-lost art of hitting the cutoff man.
Interesting article and idea but I see many problems with it.
First problem is this will wipe out the outfield seats and you would need a new round of new stadiums that were all larger and you would need these down through the minors at least.
The Multiple Relay does not actually sound exciting and the additional Inside the Ballpark Homers would be exciting, but not enough to warrant a radical change. If you were right, the increased offense is not something the game needs, but I think you are actually wrong. I would not move my outfields further back then they are now. As the outfield gets deeper, the ground that needs to be covered expands fast. So playing them deeper is not going to be worthwhile. I would not want to give up all those extra singles in exchange for stopping some extra Inside the Ballpark Homers. I would give up the homers and get the outs.
As to the classic power hitting fielding dud in left field, he will probably still play as he is the guy that would force the manager to play his outfield deeper as with that power, he’ll get more extra base hits and homers that his defensive replacement. He will still be worth more for his offense than the light hitting speedster with a fairly good arm.
The change is clearly economically infeasible and more so I don’t believe it would have the desired effect. However an interesting and thought provoking article.
Technically, the changes you propose do not require a rule change; Rule 1.04 states that the field must be at least 250' to the nearest obstruction in fair territory, with a minimum of 320' down the lines and 400' to center preferable, with a note at the end of the section that specifically states that any field built after 1958 must be a minimum of 325' down the lines and 400' to center (this, of course, has been ignored without penalty to the offending teams in several diamonds built in the last decade or so), but there is no admonition against making a field so large that no one can hit a ball out of it. There have been plenty of fields with unusually long dimensions -- old Tiger Stadium was 440' to straight away center; the Polo Grounds had very short porches down the lines, but the centerfield was cavernous, ranging from 414' in left center to 483' to straightaway center (out near where Willie Mays made The Catch), to 449' to right center.
As far as I'm aware, the longest home run ever hit only went around 570' so making the walls 600' all the way around and 30' high would be a little over the top. I suspect teams would learn to mitigate balls rolling forever by simply allowing the outfield grass to grow a little longer -- the diamond where I coached most of my games this year was not well maintained by the city and the grass was consistently around 3" high, turning hard hit ground balls into slow rollers, with balls literally disappearing from view in the lawn, while balls to the outfield seemed to come to a screaming halt as soon as they touched down. Adding an inch to the grass height would almost certainly make it well nigh impossible to get balls to roll to a 600' wall.
Anyway, I am in favor of pushing outfield fences back a bit in most diamonds, and I do agree that adding some square footage to many diamonds would make for a more interesting ballgame. But the average fan loves the long ball, and not the inside-the-park homer or stand-up triple, so that's not likely to change. It is an interesting thought experiment, however. :)
See, this is where I have problems, Beebs. You’re thinking too traditionally here—ballparks are being built smaller, not larger these days. (Shea had 10,000 greater capacity than Citifield—not by accident). TV contracts don’t depend a tiny bit on what the actual attendance is, and 95% of games are under 45,000 attendance anyway. You lose the bleacher seats, sure, but they suck, and you can build as far out along the foul lines (that will go a long way out) as you think people are willing to sit.Quote:
Originally posted by beebs
Why would ticket prices go up? The capacity would be about what the capacity of a standard ballpark now would be. You’d gain one seat 400 feet from homeplate along the foul line (two actually, since there are two foul lines) than you’d lose by eliminating one bleacher seat 400 feet from home.
Your point about injuries to the outfielders and the baserunners is absurd—you’re yanking that straight out of your ass. Did Sox outfielders, with a small outfield, tend to get injured much less frequently than Yankee outfielders did, roaming around in that big old Yankee Stadium outfield? (Compare Mickey Mantle’s injury rate to Dom Dimaggio’s sometime.) Was Willie Mays’ career destroyed by covering the gigantic Polo Grounds centerfield? Was any NY Giant’s career ruined by covering that expanse? Do base-stealing clubs suffer more injuries than station-to-station clubs do? If that were remotely true, every team would counsel its players not to steal bases, since that just leads to injury. Instead every club that has basestealers tries to find situations for them to run. You’re making up shit with no basis, to present a reactionary argument which boils down to: never change anything, it’s fine as it is.
Of course my proposals are radical and extreme and would change the game—I’m arguing that the changes would be exciting and beneficial, and you’re free to disagree. (This week’s proposal was among the tamer ones—you should see the next one. You’ll flip your bib.) But could we disagree by actually arguing points that have some basis in fact, or least in logic? To argue, as you’re doing here “That’s just wrong—and it would lead inevitably to psychological damage, and hemorrhoids and increasing gayness” doesn’t add to the argument at all.
I don’t like picking on anyone, much less a fellow Sox fan and Jali fan, Beebs, so please take this in the spirit it’s written in. Obviously I’m generating these nutty ideas with the understanding that they will seem strange and unsettling and disturbing to folks. But they’re presented in good faith, and it would be great if you could respond in kind. If you just dislike them because they’re weird and bother you somehow, I can’t argue with that, but please don’t distort my points to reach that judgment. Here you’ve said things that you need to back up before you’ve really made an effective counterposition.
What I need to know is where on the Taconic Parkway? I've driven that road so many times I could probably do it in my sleep.
Just north of Baird Park.
That's an interesting choice...it is not very heavily traveled at night and it is likely there would be no witnesses.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
If I were going to toss one of my brothers out of a moving car on the Taconic Parkway I would probably do it just south of Fahnestock State Park...there is a pretty steep hill there and you could probably get some bouncing/rolling action going.
I'll pass your advice on to my brother.
In other news, the dimensions of baseball stadiums, which determines the size of the field, or at least its limitations, is largely due to the arbitrary size of city blocks. Early stadiums needed to be built on pre-existent city blocks--there was very little chance in basebal's early days that a team owner could cause a street or two to become de-mapped, as they might very easily today, so stadiums needed to be small enough to fit into a block, and the fields needed to fit into a stadium, and in the interest of rough uniformity even the stadiums that could build willy-nilly were built in the same prortions. No more--if they ever did need to be built on that scale.
We're now free--I certainly am--to reconsider the size and proportion of baseball fields given a good deal of freedom that cities would grant to stadium builders, and think what would be the size for the good of the game, not the needs of the zoning board of 1912. If the Red Sox went to city of Boston and said that they might need a larger, differently shaped block to build a new Fenway on, you don't suppose the city would tell them to stick it, do you? They'd say "Jump? How high would you like?" Hell, they've already turned Landsdowne Street into a permanent street fair just because the Sox need some extra elbow room.
Damn you prr. I'm not adding superfluous capitalizations to your name, and now you're going to make me me do that cut & paste thing with quotes. Buckle in for disorganization.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
I wasn't trying to say that these changes would be disastrous for MLB as a business. These changes are exciting and plenty of people would keep watching games on TV including myself. My early response in this thread was a collection of the first things that popped into my head reading your article early on. In your article you said:Quote:
Originally posted by prr
I won't pretend that you're insisting that these changes aren't implemented immediately after the 2009 season, but even if it's a five to ten year plan to drastically change the dimensions and construction of every ballpark in the league, if not replacing the stadiums in some cities altogether. Smaller capacity or not, which was the cheaper ticket? Shea or Citi Park? I know ticket prices are going up every year, and in almost every city, but radical changes would exacerbate that everywhere.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
No, yes, yes, no, no.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
No, I don't think it's absurd to think that there would be more opportunities for accidents; but yes, it is a WAG. Like I said earlier, these thoughts weren't trying to demolish your plan they were only the things that first occurred to me. You wanted fences out 600 feet? Well, I broke out my pencil, ruler, and compass to measure some stuff out. I added in the new distances, calculated trajectories, and did a volume displacement test in a cup of water to determine all the extra area. When I entered the data into my super computer the result looked a bit... what's the right work... clumsy?
Once again, that was just my thought after hearing the idea (I lied about the calculations). I still can't see where I was trying to make much of an "argument". Anyways, isn't it incumbent upon you, the guy with the new idea, to show me, the guy who has never seen this idea, to convince me? Were outfielders in smaller parks just as prone to injury to players in larger parks? Really, yes? I didn't know that. Thank you.
Do I think baseball is fine as it is? Sure. But I wouldn't call myself an old ninny who never wants to change anything. Are you sure you didn't have that bullet in the chamber before whoever made a reply? Next time I could try to come up with a complete response as good as jimbo's. That's not going to happen though, I'm not that smart when it comes to this game. I'll look forward to reading next week's article though.
Thanks for the temperate response, beebs. It goes without saying (and here I am, saying it) that ALL of these ideas that I'm going to put forward are not very practical. I'm not expecting Fred Wilpon to read this, slap his forehead, and order a wrecking ball for Citifield. Or that ALL MLB ballparks are going to decide to build new stadiums more or less simultantaneously to my proportions.
But I think it would make for a better sport, a more athletic sport, and more exciting to watch--it's just not going to happen any time soon. Maybe I should use that as the overarching title to this series of nutty ideas: "Ain't Gonna Happen Any Time Soon."
As far my burden of proof goes, sure. But it's easier to prove stuff to someone who asks, "Hey, wouldn't outfielders get crippled by all that extra running?" than to someone who pretends that that it's pretty clear that injuries to outfielders would inevitably result from extra running.
Just doing a brief search to see if there is a correlation between injuries to players and weird outfields I tried thinking of one of the more wonky outfields in baseball. So I googled "houston outfield injuries". Ah hah! Bee attacks! Bees must have some attraction to the outfield, and are a grave danger to the players. Alas, the story is from Petco Park.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
Back to the drawing board. :sad:
It is an interesting idea, but ultimately I don't think it would make the game more exciting. I don't think injuries would be an issue though, most of those are caused by sudden stops/turns rather than running long distances.
Did you see Crawford's catch in the all star game? Pretty exciting no? That wouldn't be possible with your field. Like diving catches? There will be a lot less of those too as outfielders play more conservatively. I wouldn't want my team trying to make a spectacular catch if it is a guaranteed home-run if they fail. I also don't think more inside park home-runs would make things that much better. For one the rareness is part of their charm, but more so they usually come with an exciting play at the plate. A batter cruising into home as the ball slowly rolls to the wall does not a Sportscenter highlight make. Furthermore the thought of a 500 foot home-run that is caught because it has massive hang time while 120 foot line drive that rolls to the wall for an easy home-run based on where it happens to bounce seems unfair to me.
Now, the sport I would like to see expand the field is basketball. The players in the NBA are too big for the court size.
I'd like it if only a few parks increased there size. Have a few at the minimum size also.
I'll submit that any 500-foot shot that is caught is likely to be pretty damned exciting, hang time be damned, but you've got a good point, in defense of which I'll add that I'm not wedded to the 600-fence figure. If 550 feet or 500 feet would yield more exciting results--more plays at the plate, more willingness to risk a diving catch, etc.--then that's the figure I would go with. I derived that 600 foot figure from the research institute I've been using for years now, otherwise known as "my ass." If 500 feet--or 700 feet--work better, then that's what I'm proposing.Quote:
Originally posted by hawkeyeop
The larger point is to re-think some "givens" of the game that may serve to make for a better game. Underlying this point (and I'll need to make this explicitly at some point here) is the fact that I am--or was--a genuine traditionalist. I first followed baseball when it was a 16-team, 2-league deal, played exclusively in St Louis and points east, and I would like to see that preserved today. But it ain't happening. So many values contrary to that historically stable construct--the same 16 teams, the same 154-game schedule--have been introduced in my lifetime, that the notion of radicalizing the game has long since occurred, only it's happened so slowly over the past 60 years that some traditionalists objecting to nutty ideas such as I'm proposing in this column actually believe that they are defending some time-honored principles. But if you look at the game now--all these new-fangled divisions, all this Wild Card nonsense, this crazy DH rule --it bears little resemblence to the game I grew up loving anyway. So this series of nutty ideas is basically "Off with their heads!" You can't come up with an idea so radical (and some of my anti-Wild Card, anti-league, anti-schedule, anti-stadium, anti-everything proposals to come in future columns are certainly that) that will outrage me any more than what I put up with today. There is, in other words, no more "traditional" MLB anyway, so why not re-examine the game and introduce changes that make sense, or at least stimulate thinking, however radical? In this series of radical proposals, I aim to propose some notions that will change the game so much you couldn't recognize it as "baseball" perhaps, and if none of my ideas succeeds in offending a baseball fan somewhere, then I will have failed. My next column, for example, contains a very real possibility that would destroy the game entirely, make it unwatchable, and yet I think it (and all these ideas) has considerable merit and logic behind it. If you want to kill me as a result, cool. I'm only a bunch of electrons anyway.
While I am interested in seeing the radical ideas you plan to suggest in the coming weeks, let me reiterate that this current proposal is 100% entirely withing the rules of baseball as it currently is written. The only prohibitions against a 600' fence at this point are likely concerns over the extra real estate required, the fact that fans like to see balls get hit over the fence, and the simple reality that no one has done it yet. The rules require an outfield fence, but they do not have any upper limit for distance, so I'm afraid I cannot with clear conscience call this suggestion all that radical. :)Quote:
Originally posted by prr
If it gets you shoved out of a moving car, that's radical enough for me.
Also, you're aculturated to balls going over fences two or three times per game as normal baseball, but look at the Senators' home field HR rates sometime. There were whole months, I think, where no Senator hit a ball over Griffith Park's fences, they were that far away. Washington fans weren't complaining about how this sux, this isn't baseball, WHF is this?--because they were used to it.
Sounds like the Mets this year at Citi Field.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
See, that kinda gets right to the heart of it -- I don't think you'd need to extend the fences back to 600' to reduce or almost entirely eliminate over-the-fence home runs. Backing things out to maybe 350' down the lines and 425' to center would almost completely wipe out the power hitting game, and that's only adding 25' to the current standard.
Not enough ITP HR, IMO. I want two or three per game
Throw enough fucked-up jagged corners and hills and flag poles and shit into the outfield and you'll get your ITP HRs. :D
Now that just ain't baseball. I mean, you'll be talking land mines and mortar shells next, right? Talk about your injuries....
Actually, I was talking about that abomination of a diamond in Houston, and all the other superfluous corners and high spots for no reason and low spots for no reason and other crap that they've been designing into outfield walls for the last few years, but land mines could be interesting as well...
Making them run along a narrow rail between bases would make for a far more entertaining game...especially if there were crocodiles either side.
I could get behind this suggestion.Quote:
Originally posted by ivan astikov
I suggested the odd ravenous wolf and people just looked at me funny. :(
That's because girls know nothing about baseball.
What, it should be ravenous cougars?
Ravenous cougars might be distracted by the smell of hot dogs in the stands; I'd suggest a group of sexually deprived bonobos, personally.Quote:
Originally posted by featherlou
Just so I don't get beaned right off the bat, I loved this one.
Kind of liked it myself, beebs--thanks. I was getting concerned when Pepper hadn't posted it yet by the 15th, but now I see she was waiting for the 58th anniversary of Gaedel's at-bat to post that one.
Yes, that's it exactly. Also, I was out of town on the 15th and couldn't post it until I got home...
Loved this article! Thanks, prr. Midget angle aside (doubt MLB will be talked into changing the rule on that...), I'm a huge fan of the OBP stat. My favorite players are the one who figure out a way to NOT get an out.
Veeck as in Wreck was a great book, but I read it so long ago, I had mostly forgotten about it.
As to the team of Natinal's Little People, it won't work. There are plenty of pitchers with enough control to strike out even people that are only 3' tall. The would be tossing at BP speeds, but it should not matter. The league could also put in a minimal strike zone size if needed.
Veeck told Eddie to crouch like Rickey Henderson, and Henderson had a strike zone the size of a pack of cigarettes. If you make a minimum strike zone, you'll have to eject Rickey from the HoF.
Pitchers in Gaedel's time had good control too, but midgets still have a 1.000 OBP.
Actually, of course, since Henderson wouldn't be born for a few years, he didn't tell him to model his crounch on Rickey's stance specifically but...that was the general idea. What Veeck also instructed Eddie Gaedel was that if he swung at a single pitch, Veeck would have a sniper in the stands assassinate him on the spot.
Sarah, you a big Big Hurt fan?
You know, I'm not, though I probably should be. I don't follow White Sox baseball at all! I have never quite understood what all of his problems were with the team, and why he doesn't get more recognition as one of baseball's great players.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
OMG, you're a Cubs fan?? I had no idea things were this bad--my sympathies. Words fail me at a time like this. How you have suffered!!!
You really didn't know? I talk about the Cubs all the time! I'm not a fan of the American League in general. ;)Quote:
Originally posted by prr
I haven't been here that much in baseball season lately, other than to post odd and ends about baseball. (See "Chat bullies" thread to understand.) It's unusual, because I would have noticed Cubs-madness otherwise--I've been an NL fan since the early 60s and have relished Cubbie losses particularly since 1969. In my lifetime, I've been a Dodgers' fan (cuz the great K went to my high school), a Cincinnati fan (cuz my big cousin was one once), a Mets fan (most of my life) and I've admired several other NL teams (and am now a Red Sox fan, cuz their GM is someone I once babysat for) but I've always detested the Cubs. I did kinda like Glenn Beckert, though.
I am not old enough to remember Beckert playing. You are plenty old, though, if you babysat for a GM! ;) I thought MAYBE I might be old enough to have babysat for Kenny Williams, but I looked him up and he's 3 years older than I am.Quote:
Originally posted by prr
I was born to be a Cubs fan...it's kind of like religion in my family. ;)
There should be a new column up any day now--I've sent this Sept. 15th's installment to Pepper.
Does anyone know where the Front Page is on mellophant? I cant find it, and don't know if my article has been posted.
It literally doesn't exist yet. The forum itself was going to be converted into an articles forum, but that was changed back or something. We're also going to install wordpress to run the front page, but that's still on the To Do list as well. I could simply post the article now as a thread...which might be the best compromise for the moment.Quote:
Originally posted by prr