King for Another Day

Jason Michael Barker

In my last column, I outlined a plan for radical geographic realignment. As I had hoped, this plan generated some e-mail response from you, the readers. Before getting to what you had to say, a quick recap of the plan.

There would be five divisions of six teams each, four of which are:

• West: Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Athletics and Diamondbacks.
• Central: Cubs, White Sox, Royals, Cardinals, Indians, and Reds.
• South: Astros, Rangers, Rockies, Braves, Devil Rays and Marlins.
• East: Yankees, Mets, Orioles, Pirates, Phillies, and Red Sox.

For the most part, you didn't have a problem with those groupings. The only dispute concerned the fifth division, the North, which contained Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Minnesota.

The primary concern among readers was the time zone discrepancy. Particularly with such an unbalanced schedule (more than half of a team's games would be within their own division), teams would not be happy about playing so many games outside of their own time zone, because it just isn't good for TV.

This week, for example, my beloved Mariners are on an East Coast road trip. Tuesday night they played in Detroit, and the game started at 4:05 pm Pacific time. Because I didn't leave work until nearly six, I missed all but the final few innings of the game. On Saturday, the M's are in Cleveland, and the game will start at 10:35 in the morning over here in Seattle. I don't mind telling you that I don't plan on being up quite that early on a Saturday.

By the same token, East Coast teams must hate to play out here in Seattle. Or more appropriately, their fans must hate it. If you live in New York, for example, and the Yankees are in Seattle for a 7:35 pm local start time, then the game won't even be on until 10:35 in the Big Apple. It follows that there will be some loss of advertising money, since not as many people will be up to watch the game.

Because so much of the game is driven by the almighty dollar, these are certainly valid criticisms of my realignment plan. I haven't actually taken the time to shuffle the teams around, but clearly Colorado cannot be in the same division as the two Florida teams, nor can Seattle be grouped with Toronto.

Thankfully, reader Paul Zeeman did take the time to come up with a new plan, and frankly it's light years better than mine. His divisions are as follows:

• Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Diego
• Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Houston, St. Louis, Kansas City
• Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Florida, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati
• New York Yankees, New York Mets, Philadelphia, Boston, Montreal, Toronto
• Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee, Minnesota

And, as he points out, the only real rivalries missing are Pittsburgh-Philadelphia and Cleveland-Cincinnati. Good work, Paul.

The other issue I failed to address was that of the post-season format, although you might already have guessed what the system would look like. The five division winners make the post-season, plus three wild card teams based on record. This is somewhat tricky in that one wild card team might play a vastly different schedule than another, but for the time being I'm willing to live with that.

Those eight teams would then be seeded one through eight based on record, and after that things would look pretty much the same as they do now, except that there wouldn't be an ALCS or NLCS. At least we wouldn't call them that. Don't worry though, we can still call the "finals" the World Series.

Now two other points I wanted to cover last time, but didn't. First, revenue sharing, or the current lack thereof. This is by no means intended as a solution to baseball's "financial problems," but rather as a way to level the playing field slightly. Of course, we'll never have a truly level playing field as long as some owners are willing to spend more than others or until baseball implements a hard cap on salaries, but I digress.

The teams should share everything, monetarily speaking. Put it all into a pot -- ticket sales, parking, concessions, TV and radio contracts, merchandise licensing, everything -- and split it 30 ways. Sure the Yankees are able to command a huge television contract, but that contract wouldn't exist without the other teams in baseball; in other words, nobody's going to pay to watch the Yankees stand around with no competition on the field. The Yankees, by themselves, don't draw the TV money. Baseball does.

Finally, cater to fans, specifically young fans. Yes, attendance is up all over the league, but baseball is in danger of losing its fan base because that fan base is getting older. Kids today are much more interested in the flash and glitz of the NBA, with its tattoos, trash talk, and 360-degree slam dunks.

In order to develop a strong fan base that will be around for years to come, baseball needs to start appealing to the younger generation. I'm not suggesting radical changes to the game in order to attract fans (they've already done that with all of this damned offense), but rather, ways to get kids to the game.

Perhaps more promotions geared at kids. Let the kids run and play on the field, as with the Mariners' "Run Around the Bases" event in years past. The best idea I've heard is offering a free kid's ticket with each paying adult admission. Not only would that bring more kids to the game, it might quiet all those people who think it's soooo expensive to take the family to a ballgame these days (it's not).

Or maybe we should just hire a commissioner who cares about the game and its fans...

Nah, that'll never work.

about the author

Jason Michael Barker would generate more revenue for MLB via the live locker room webcam. Explain that watching David Wells make a sandwich while nude is more likely to harm the sport at jmb@strikethree.com.