Baseball's Lack Of Urgency

Text and video by Mike Drew

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- I'm a big baseball fan, but I think it has a real problem right now with its lack of urgency. Some of it is their fault and some of it isn't.

What is their fault, primarily, is what's happened to the challenge system. The average length of a replay review is now two and a half minutes. I've seen reviews go five or six. It's ridiculous and nobody wants to sit through that. It slows the game to an absolute crawl.

Now, what isn't the game's fault is the group of kids coming up today who want to be athletes. If you think about it, the kids of this generation, more so than any other generation that came before them, have been exposed to so many things in their lives that move lightning fast. Social media, video games, between texting and tweeting, the ability to somehow convey all their feelings in 140 characters. They don't really care about baseball, these kids, unless somebody's hitting a 400 foot home run. They want there to be action. They want things to be happening. That's why they cross over and play these other sports like football and basketball that move faster.

So, if baseball can't appeal to these kids, they risk becoming obsolete in a couple of decades.

Here is an audio version of the above commentary.