I am sure better minds than mine have puzzled through this, but day games for the World Series and earlier start times generally would allow more people to watch the duration of the games and allow younger audiences. I know it is a complicated equation. I believe as BJ above states that the longer season is a result of maximizing Fri-Sat-Sun games and having more off days–Mon-Tues-Thurs–during the season to increase gate receipts.

But the showcase of the sport is the playoffs. My assumption is avoiding head-to-head competition with football drives the industry to maximize night games for the playoffs. If the playoffs began in September and MLB were willing to schedule day games on Saturday and Sunday, some of the west coast/east coast problems would be mitigated.

The picture of the Phillies and Rays playing in freezing rain late in October should spur MLB to reconsider some of their underlying assumptions. They have been slow to adjust to changing realities in the past and so I fear I will continue to miss far to much of the best baseball of the season.

TL

You can’t always guarantee who will be in the World Series. If baseball can get control of the schedule to cater to the markets that are competing, then that might work so that an East Coast series can be seen by plenty of Philadelphians, Atlantans, etc., and those games could start at 7 pm ET. But, the flip side is like the 2002 World Series, where both teams reside on the West Coast. Are you going to start those games at 10 pm and cut out the best general baseball markets in America (a.k.a the Northeast)?

Don’t forget that Fox has had the rights for the World Series since 1998. And the 1997 had 7:10 start times (according to B-R)

Fix #2: Four less off days during the season. This tells the player’s union to go screw themselves, people want to see baseball, not off days.

Result: A shorter season by two weeks. Start the season four days later, end the season 10 days earlier, playoffs would start before September ends.

Benefit result: Baseball would be into “important” games much earlier in the season, before the main competition for viewers (yes, the NFL) kicks into high gear. The NFL is postseason baseball’s biggest problem today.

Fix #3: Five game playoff series would end in seven days max. Seven gamers should be completed in nine days max. Both series over early? Move the start time of the next series up accordingly. No downtime. No team sitting for a week.

Result: Additional shortening of the postseason on the calender, World Series would and should be all wrapped up by Oct. 20th most years, as it should be.

Benefit result: Again, baseball is taking newspaper, internet, radio and TV publicity away from the still-early season NFL and college football.

Fix #4: Lifetime ban on all players who have used steroids, and a stripping of all of the statistics of those players from the record book. Too many of us have left the game for this ONE reason.

I am sorry about the Mountain Time zone folks and left coasters, but the series was between two teams in the East and making us miss it for the small number of fans who might have tuned in from Walla Walla doesn’t make sense.