Ways to Make Baseball Count Again

I don't usually tackle the topics of sports around these parts, so this may come as a shock to my regular readers who don't know me personally (so, like three or four people probably).  I like sports.  I can pretty much watch any sports on TV and most certainly love attending in person.  One of my favorites to attend in person is baseball.

It used to be America's past time, but now it seems like it's time might be past. Football is more popular and basketball (both college and the pros) attract a lot of fans as well.  And as baseball struggles to find ways to become more popular again, I have a couple of ideas for them:

Shorten the Season
It's the only sport where a team can go on a 15-20 game slide and still make the playoffs.  Over the course of six months...half of the damn year...they play 162 games.  Is that really necessary?  Don't we know who the best teams are after, oh say the 80th or 90th game? Knock a few games off the schedule.  Let's start in May instead of April and then start the playoffs just after Labor Day.  No reason to have games snowed out on either end.

Relegation 
Any fan of the soccer in Europe knows what this word means. Here is the deal.  By August some team, usually one (or both) from Chicago, are out of the playoffs by a good 20-30 games but still have two months of the season left the play.  So what do they have to play for?  To stay in the majors.  Relegation would take the top three teams from Triple A and move them up.  It would also take the bottom three teams from the majors and move them down.  This would also happen at the Double A and Single A levels as well.  Now the bottom teams have something to fight for.  It will never happen but it would sure make things interesting when the Cubs are playing in Double A and the Yankees have to travel to Toledo for a three game set against the Mud Hens.

So what do you think?  Am I crazy?  Probably.  Would it work?  Probably.  Will it happen?  Most certainly not.

In the end it really doesn't matter much to me anyway.  In my world baseball doesn't exist until the Blackhawks are done playing hockey, which lately has been well into May or even June, and by then, the White Sox are pretty much already mathematically eliminated from the playoff anyway.

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