The Daily - The Plan to Save Baseball From Boredom

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Major League Baseball is putting in effect some of the biggest changes in the sport’s history in an effort to speed up the game and inject more activity.As the 2023 season opens, Michael Schmidt, a Times reporter, explains the extraordinary plan to save baseball from the tyranny of the home run.Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: With three major rule changes this season, Major League Baseball will try to reinvent itself while looking to the game’s past for inspiration.Here’s a look at the new rules.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

I have a mild amount of light buzzing. Is that okay? That's because Rob has got his mic on in that control room. Oh, okay. But he's going to turn it off now. Bye, Rob. See ya. See ya.

That's a home run call. Oh, really? Wait, can you just explain that to me? So, I think the lead announcer for the Yankees on television when they hit a home run goes, See ya. Oh, because like the ball is gone. Yeah, yeah. Not like, it's going, it's going, it's gone.

Well, there's the other one. The other Yankee one. It is high, it is far, it is gone. See ya. The best is when they get it wrong. You know, it is high, it is far, and he's shaking and it's caught by the center fielder. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

On opening day of baseball's 2023 season, Mike Schmidt on a historic plan to save the sport from the tyranny of the home run. It's Thursday, March 30th. So I can't believe that I'm actually going to tell you this. I grew up playing baseball. I remember a handful of memories from my time. The top two are when I gave up home runs.

Gave them up. Oh, meaning you were the pitcher. Correct. Etched in my memory. Uh-huh. There is nothing more humiliating than standing on the mound after someone has hit the ball over the fence and is running around the bases celebrating.

I know. I guess it's just like an endless shame spiral. Everyone's looking at you. You did that. I mean, I think about these moments fairly often. Right. And then, like, you would later grow up to cover baseball as a journalist, among many other beats you'd have for the times.

And the last time that you came on the show to talk about baseball was when the sport was weathering, and in some ways not weathering the pandemic. And the reason we asked you to come back is because baseball is now experiencing another major change. So tell us about that change. This season, baseball will operate under new rules that are the biggest changes in on-the-field play, certainly in my lifetime, if not the history of the game. Wow. Just give me a couple tastes of this change. Well, the first one that you'll see is a pitch clock.

Kind of like a shot clock. Sort of, yeah, a shot clock. But in this case, a pitch clock. A pitch clock. That is a a shot clock. Sort of, yeah, a shot clock. But in this case, a pitch clock. A pitch clock. That is a big change. What else? The players will be positioned differently on the field. Hmm. And the bases are getting bigger.

You won't be able to notice it with your eye. But they are bigger. But they'll now be several inches wider, longer. What is driving these changes, Mike? Baseball is facing a semi-existential threat in terms of its appeal to fans. threat in terms of its appeal to fans. The game has become not only too long, but too boring. The non-baseball fan or baseball hater will sort of be laughing at that because they'll say, it was always boring. But it has tipped over the edge. And I think, as a fan, and as someone who has covered the game

and keeps a close eye on it and still talks to people within the game, that the home run is to blame. Hmm. That is a provocative thesis. Yeah. Look, the home run is the cornerstone of the game. It's the most exciting play of the game. It's part of our lexicon in this country. You just knocked it out of the park. But the game has become addicted to the home run. And because of that addiction to the most exciting play in the game, the whole game has become boring. So explain how it is, why it is,

that the home run goes from something to be celebrated and becomes part of this boring problem of baseball, how we got to this point where we need these reforms. So to understand that, we need to go back to the early days of Major League Baseball, where the home run was this engine that powered the growth of the sport. Way back in the early 1900s, home runs were not the key driving force of the game. But then came the 1920s. A hard-hitting lefty named Babe Ruth

comes along and is a power hitter. Oh boy, over the fans. Do you think you can do that? And Ruth captures the country's attention through his slugging. That ball blazed like a bullet when he connected. This is the sight the fans came to see. and help the sports popularity grow and set it on a trajectory that it follows in the decades that come. Rhodes cuts at the first pitch.

And there goes the ball down the right field line. A home run into the feet. The home run comes to create and define the iconic moments and players of the game. The Bobby Thompson shot heard round the world. Figures like Mickey Mantle, Roger Marris. Here's the windup. Fastball hits. Keeps the right. It's Roger Marris, Hank Aaron. It's gone! It's 7-15! There's a new home run champion of all time! power behind it, with a bit of sort of the Americana of how strong you are and how far you can hit it, becomes a central part of the game. And then the story of the home run

takes a dramatic turn in the mid-90s. Remind us what happens. 1994. World Wars and acts of God couldn't do to baseball what 28 owners and 700 players have done. They killed off the balance of the season. The sport is ground to a halt because of a strike. The two sides have been locked in a bitter impasse over the owner's demand for a cap on player salaries. The World Series is canceled. I think the players are pretty greedy,

and I think the owners are too. I hate it because, I mean, they already have enough money. And as the sport comes out of the strike, it's at its most diminished state. No one wants to go back to the park. There's a sense of betrayal. You didn't play. Incred go back to the park. Right. There's a sense of betrayal. You didn't play. Incredibly damaging to the game. And in 1998, as the sport is still trying to get its legs underneath it, fans witness this extraordinary chase between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa to break the single season home run record,

which at the time had been held by Roger Marris at 61 home runs. That's what everybody around baseball is paying their money to see. McGuire hit, Sosa hit. I'm not a player, I just crush a lot. Home run number 58 for McGuire. Make it 59! 60! Number 61!

A feel-good story of two sluggers crisscrossing the country as they try to hit the most home runs. Here comes the man of the hour, Mark McGuire, who is all for winning. On the night of September 8th, 1998, McGuire and Sosa are actually playing against each other. And with the commissioner in the stands, and the whole country watching.

...wondering if this is the at-bat that Mark Maguire moves one place in front of Roger Maris. Down the left field line, is it enough? Gone! there it is maguire breaks the record and in this wonderful moment maguire and sosa embrace on the field And the home run has never been more central. Correct.

And everyone's trying to hit home runs. It's not just that these two players are. Home runs are up across the league. Everyone's hitting home runs. But what happens is that in the years that follow, we find out that that chase that felt so good and that brought everyone back was built in part on a lie. That the players were using banned drugs. Steroids. Correct. tarnish and create questions about these new records, but it sets off a series of other problems for the sport

that go on for the decade plus that follows as it's haunted by federal and congressional investigations into the use of steroids by players. And, like, I have to imagine that that steroid use that Sosa and Maguire were involved in was at least somewhat inspired by the game's emphasis on home runs. So does this scandal lead to any kind of reckoning

around the place of the home run, its primacy in the sport? It leads to a reckoning in the sense that the sport needs to police itself from performance-enhancing drugs. But by no means does anyone turn away from the home run.

Why not? Because a new phenomena further fuels the drive for the home run. And that's the money ballification of baseball. All right, just explain that for the 25 listeners who didn't read the book or watch the movie. Teams become very focused on statistics

and trying to come up with the greatest chances mathematically of scoring and preventing runs. Right. This is the firm application not just of instincts, but of math in the game. Correct. And numbers proliferate throughout the sport. Let me give you an example of what this looks like. I don't know the last time I've seen a four-man infield on the right side. Teams have so much data about where players are hitting the ball that they begin to rearrange their defenses. A lot of guys bunched over there in right field.

In a way that makes it much harder for a player actually to get a hit because they're able to put a fielder exactly where the ball is likely to land. And the ball will be hit into the shift. They get an out, it's only because of that shift. 1-1 and Gallo hits this one into that shift. 1-1, and Gallo hits this one into that shift. And as the sport is grappling with all of this new data and these changes on the field that are responding to it, the home run emerges as far and away the most appealing way to score.

Right, because it's the only way to cut through all these data-driven defenses that you just described. Unless you're going to put your players on each other's shoulders in the outfield to try and stop the ball from going up the defense, there's nothing your fielders can do. So, in the wake of a steroid scandal that was in part inspired by perhaps an overemphasis on home runs, we get a data-driven system that still overemphasizes, arguably, home runs. All roads keep leading back in baseball to the home run. And it becomes so extreme

that it leads to the problem of boredom that the sport is now confronting. We'll be right back. so like how exactly do home runs become boring home runs almost by definition cannot be boring home runs themselves are not boring but everything else that comes with everyone in the game concentrating on them is because instead of trying to learn how to spray the ball around the field or someone that can leg out a single to a double or a triple, hitters start to concentrate

on doing everything they can to just try and hit a home run. Players become even more patient at the plate because they're looking for just that perfect pitch that they can drive over the fence. They change their swing to have more of an uppercut to try and hit it out of the park. But because you're swinging up,

you're also more likely to miss. So in the process of this happening, you end up with one of three results, a strikeout, a walk, or a home run. And home runs don't happen all that often. So the action on the field goes way down because you don't have just regular good old-fashioned hits. Right. You don't have good old-fashioned baseball anymore. You just kind of have an endless home run derby. The time between batted balls in play, that goes from in the 1980s being under three minutes to being almost every four minutes last season. So about a minute

more time between every single ball in play. And of course, a minute doesn't sound like much in isolation, but over the course of an entire game, I have to imagine that starts to really add up. At the same time, teams that are pitching are trying to do everything to prevent that home run. So they're bringing in different pitchers. They're encouraging pitchers to give their max effort on every pitch to try and make sure that they get that strikeout so there's no contact to the bat. And all of these things are slowing the game down. Correct. And games become longer. They become 20 to 30 minutes longer on average. And so at what point does the league say to itself,

all right, enough. We have got to do something about this. We've got to make this sport more fun. We've got to make it faster. So it being baseball, it took a while. It's a slow sport. Thematic. And in this story, there's one person who made that call.

Hi. Hi. I'm Mike Schmidt. I'm here to see the commissioner. So I went directly to him. I went to the offices of the baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred. Okay, so I've known you for almost 17 years. We have screamed at each other.

I thought you screamed at me more than I screamed at you, but I remember. And you guys have quite a long history. Go way back. Sometimes you can't make your point without, you know, raising a decibel or two, and that's fine. So what does Manfred tell you? So he knows there's a problem. We did fan-based research, and it was consistent over a period of years that fans wanted a game, brisker pace, more athleticism, more balls in play. And so they wanted that best form of baseball back.

Was it because baseball was too boring? I don't think it was too boring. I think that baseball changed. He doesn't say that baseball has a boring problem, but he confirms that there's a real pace issue. Right. A speed of action and length of game. And he knows something has to be done,

and he's known that for a very long time. And by a year or two into my commissionership, I had a great consensus we needed to fix this. So why does it take seven more years? You know, it was... I know you're going to laugh when I say this, an exercise of discretion on my part. The problem for him is that he's not truly a baseball guy, was not a player, was not an owner, didn't run a team. I thought I'm kind of acting in a way that's going to change what they're doing on the field. I thought I'm kind of acting in a way

that's going to change what they're doing on the field. I thought that was an explosive combination. You're the labor lawyer who's going to come in and tell the baseball people how to play. Right, so I thought... So he may have a kind of cred issue. Correct. So he knew that as that lawyer,

he needed to take his time and be methodical. So over many years, almost a decade, he plots this change. Waiting till you got an agreement so that the players understood it was coming. Talking to players about them. Getting the owners on board for it. Testing at the minor league level what these changes would be.

I mean, my guys, we played 8,000 games in the minor league, literally, with these rules. You know, you play 8,000 games, you realize this is an issue and you need to make this a problem. Shepherding, ushering, cajoling the sport into this major change. Right. Making sure everybody was comfortable with it, which takes time. Correct. And all that work finally culminates in these new rules

that are being rolled out this season. So tell me more about these rule changes. You started to hint at them at the beginning of our conversation. Let's do it in more depth and how they're supposed to actually fix baseball's problems. So again, there's three big changes coming this season. The pitch clock, the bigger bases, and where fielders can stand in the field. So let me start with the fielders. Remember, we talked about those data-driven defenses,

essentially computers telling teams where players should be on the field. Right, which of course encourages people at bat to just hit home runs over the fielder's heads. You can't do that anymore. You have to have your infielders on the infield and you have to have two on one side and two on the other. You can't stack the defense on one side. And because of that, it opens up much more space for a player to hit a ground ball or a base hit up through the middle or through one of the holes. Got it.

And like, what about the pitch clock? What does that have to do with the home run? On the face of it, it doesn't have anything to do with the home run. Sluggers will still be waiting for the perfect pitch. But the fact that there's a clock means that the pitches will be coming more quickly and the game will be moving faster. A ticker on your screen, that gives the pitcher 15 or 20 seconds to deliver a pitch. And if the pitcher doesn't pitch before the clock goes off, it's a ball. Got it.

And then you have the larger bases. Right. One of the byproducts of the push for the home run meant that if you had a runner on base and you were looking at the numbers, you wouldn't want the runner to try and steal because the risk of getting called out stealing was too great because if the batter hit the home run. That person would never come home. Correct. And you wouldn't get the extra run. So it was worth it to not steal. Of course, stealing is exciting.

Stealing is exciting. It's perhaps the most action-packed non-home run event of the game. And those larger bases, it just makes it easier to steal. And it also makes the game a bit safer because bigger bases gives more space and potentially less collisions. At the same time, there's a new rule that limits the number of times a pitcher can try and pick off a runner. The pitchers move to try and keep the runner close to the base so they don't steal. Right, which is another thing that slows down baseball. I have endless memories of watching the pitcher seem like they're going to pitch, stop, pivot,

I might try to stop you from, it's kind of endless. Do you really have endless memories? No, I have a couple memories. Okay, okay. Do you really have endless memories of that? No, I have a couple memories. Okay, okay. When the opposing team keeps on throwing over to first base, the fans start booing. Right. Because it's just slowing the game down.

And now there's a limit on that. So, Mike, taken together, this is a campaign to make baseball more exciting by doing a few things. Elevating the other parts of the game that aren't home runs, like the base hit or the stolen base, and making those home run hitters just be less of a drag on the overall pace of the game. Yeah. I mean, I think the way to look at it is that baseball's not trying to kick the home run. Right. They're trying to kick the problems and things that come with it.

That there's other things going on. Right. And there's not things weighing it down. Got it. I'm very curious, Mike, how baseball players, who Manfred feared might not like these changes, and fans have been reacting to these new rules surprisingly it's been positive hmm baseball is not something that lends itself to new cutting-edge changes it's a sport where the players are set in their ways and fans seem to have opinions about

everything and want to debate each other on who the best players are and when the best times in baseball history were. Right. But I think surprising certainly to me and surprising to the baseball executives that are putting these new rules in place. It's been embraced. These new moves to make it faster have actually made it faster. Spring training games are more than 20 minutes shorter than they were last year. More balls are being hit in play. More players are trying to steal bases. But as Manfred and I talked about, the real test

starts in the regular season when the games actually matter. What could go wrong? Well, lots of stuff could go wrong. This is a high-risk undertaking. Why is it high-risk? Well, because if you go out on the field and

things go badly, the first 10 games that are played in high leverage, late inning situations, they get decided based on a pitch clock rule. We don't want to see that. The fans don't want to see that. And in theory, you could imagine moments where teams blame a loss on one of these new rules. And it'll all come down on Manfred. Baseball is different. It occupies a place in our culture that is very, very different.

And it comes with the burden that when you make a mistake, people care a hell of a lot more about it than, you know, if it was in another sport. And, you know, sooner or later, if the criticism gets to a certain point, you know, they'll find somebody else to take the job. And I'm okay with that. I really am. You know? Of course, there's a very strong possibility that these rule changes won't make Manfred

a lightning rod, that they're going to be embraced. Maybe they're even going to be celebrated, right? They're going to make the sport better and maybe even usher in a golden era in the sport. Golden era? I don't know about that. But a more appealing, faster, efficient product that is not going to take four hours to watch a nine inning game. Good chance.

And in that sense, we're watching an American institution embrace new and different things in a potentially positive way. Which is, you know, progress. Progress. A bit remarkable. In a potentially positive way. Which is, you know. Progress. Progress. A bit remarkable. Well, Mike, as always, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. On Wednesday, Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature passed a sweeping law that restricts which bathrooms they can use,

and bars the discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation in the classroom. Its passage was angrily opposed by Democratic lawmakers, including state Senator Karen Berg, whose transgender son died by suicide last year. This is absolute, willful, intentional hate. Hate for a small group of people that are the weakest and the most vulnerable among us. And federal regulators have approved the sale of Narcan, a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses without a prescription, making it widely available as a life-saving treatment. The decision to sell Narcan over-the-counter could vastly reduce fatal overdoses,

which have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans over the past two years. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Carlos Prieto, with help from Will Reed and Mu Zady. It was edited by Lexi Dio, with help from Michael Benoit. It was fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Dan Powell, Alicia Le Etube, and Diane Wong,

and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landverk of Wenderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.